


Know Yourself

by exclamation



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clones, Gen, Operation Kuron, Rescue Mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-19 14:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 28,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12411786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exclamation/pseuds/exclamation
Summary: In trying to reconnect to the black lion, Shiro makes a worrying discovery: he might not really be Shiro. Suspecting that he might be a clone, Shiro decides to go on a mission back to the Galra science base where he was held captive. He's not ready to tell the others what he suspects yet, but when Matt catches him sneaking out of the castle, it's clear he's not going on this mission alone.Shiro has to find out what was done to him, and if there is another version of him out there in need of saving.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently I have no self-control when it comes to starting new fics. I recently watched the new season of Voltron and there were two things that disappointed me: that we didn't get to see much interaction between Shiro and Matt, and that we didn't get any exploration of the "Shiro might be a clone" storyline. This fic is my answer to both of those.

Shiro sat in the cockpit of the black lion, feeling the familiar seat, the controls under his hands, and the presence of the lion in his mind. The lion was still in its hanger, silent and still. This wasn't about flying anywhere; this was about rebuilding what had been broken. He could feel the presence of Black, feel the intelligence that rested against his own, but it wasn't the way it used to be. Black was holding back. 

He'd convinced the lion to let him pilot it again, convinced Black to make him the Paladin again when the others had needed Voltron in battle, but Shiro couldn't help feeling that the lion had only allowed it because there had been no other choice. They others had been in trouble and so Black had let him in, but the bond that used to be there was weaker. Everything they did together was marked with resistance and not the smooth synchronicity that used to be there. 

Shiro closed his eyes, feeling for that link. 

"Why don't you trust me anymore?" he asked out loud. He felt the lion against his mind, a whisper of thought that didn't quite mesh with his own mind. 

"Please," Shiro said. "You trusted me before. Why did you stop? What happened?" 

The lion's thoughts remain, distant, unreadable. 

"I don't understand." 

He almost wanted to cry. The lion had been a part of him and then it wasn't. This half-bond felt tentative, as though Black would let him go the moment someone better came along. It wasn't that Shiro was afraid of being replaced by Keith, but that he missed the closeness. He felt abandoned. 

"Please, just explain. Tell me." 

Black's thoughts whispered closer and Shiro let them in. Images flashed into his mind. 

The last time he'd let the lion into his mind this deeply, Black had shown him the past, memories of Zarkon and the planet that had been destroyed. This time, it was Shiro's memories that filled his head, flooding into him in a jumbled mess. He was staggering through a Galra base, incoherent, still dazed from drugs. He was strapped down, with scientists leaning over him, talking about subjects and projects. He saw a lab, saw a figure lying there, eyes open, staring at nothing. He saw himself, from the outside. 

Shiro blinked and in an instant he was back in the black lion's cockpit again, disorientated but safe. 

"That was..." he tried to sort out the memories. "I was still half-drugged. I was hallucinating." He'd seen Ulaz in that haze of his escape attempt. Seeing himself had just been more of the same, or so he'd thought. The lion's presence in his mind was very clear: it didn't think it had been a hallucination. A thought entered Shiro's mind that wasn't his own: that escape had been too easy. 

It hadn't felt easy at the time, what with the injury and the crash, but the truth was that the last time he'd escaped from a Galra ship, he'd had inside help. Was it possible that the Galra had let him go? That his escape had been part of a plan? But what did it mean that he'd seen himself in that base, lying in a lab? 

"You don't think I'm the real Shiro," he said. It wasn't a question, but he felt the lion's affirmative response. 

"No," Shiro said. "You're wrong. I'm me. I know I'm me. I have my memories. This is my body. I... I'm me." 

He felt the lion's doubts, the reluctance, the uncertainty. It didn't know. He was Shiro enough that Black had been drawn to him when he was drifting, that the lion had wanted to save him from death, but he wasn't Shiro enough for the lion to trust him. 

The thoughts raced through his head and he wasn't sure how many of them came from him and how many came from the lion. What if this was all part of the Galra trap? What if the Galra scientists had been able to make a clone or a copy somehow and implanted him with the memories of the real Shiro? He could lie to the Paladins and make them think he was the real Shiro without ever knowing it was a lie. But the Galra might have planted something else in his mind, something they could use to take control of him in battle or make him turn on his friends. He could be a sleeper agent. 

And if any of this were true, if there was another version of him out there, then that other Shiro was a prisoner of the Galra. He couldn't ignore that fact, couldn't just abandon him to his fate. 

Even if he, the Shiro sitting here in Black's cockpit, was the real Shiro, then the fact that a copy existed at all still needed to be dealt with. He had to go back to that base, to see what was there without drugs and hallucinations, to find out for sure. Black would never trust him until it was done. He would never trust himself until he knew. 

He stood, about to leave the cockpit, when he felt a rumble of warning through his mind. If he didn't trust himself, would the others trust him? The question came from the lion. 

Voltron worked because of trust, because they could put faith in each other. If he shared this information, that bond of trust would be broken and he knew that was why Black hadn't shared its doubts with the other lions. 

If Shiro found out he was a copy, he would tell the others and they would deal with it, but he couldn't tell them while all he had was uncertainty. Besides, he wanted to go back to that base. He could hardly tell them that he suspected he was a Galra spy and then announce that he needed to go to a Galra facility. They would probably lock him up in a lab in the castle and perform tests to try and figure this out, even though Shiro was certain that the only answers he was going to find were at the Galra base. No, he had to keep this a secret, at least until he had more information. That meant he had to go alone. 

But he couldn't just take Black and leave the team without the ability to form Voltron. That had nearly destroyed them. They needed a black paladin and Shiro needed answers. That meant he had only one person he could talk to. 

He sat back down into the pilot seat and brought up the communications console, tapping into the lion's system. Black showed him what he needed to do to bypass the castle's communications hub so that no one would know that he was making this call. He couldn't do much about secrecy on the other end, but the Blade were secretive by default so he hoped it would be safe enough. 

His signal pinged across the galaxy to the Blade of Marmora base that had been Keith's last known location. Shiro waited. It was possible Keith was on a mission, or even just sleeping, and wouldn't see the ping. Shiro used the wait to try and come up with a plan, wanting something other than charging in blindly. He considered his options, weighing up approaches. The problem was that he couldn't remember much of the Galra base. He didn't know anything about the layout or security. Didn't know anything that would help him get in other than his general awareness from other missions and a few hazy recollections from a time when he’d been barely coherent. 

There were too many holes and he didn't like that. 

The comms screen lit up, jolting him from his thoughts, and Keith's face appeared. 

"Shiro," Keith said. "What is it? What's wrong?" 

"Nothing's wrong," Shiro said, despite all the fears inside him that said that was a lie. "I want your help with something. Are you involved in anything urgent right now?" He wanted to start this hunt for his other self this instant but he knew he couldn't sabotage the war effort or he would be undermining the coalition. 

"Nothing urgent," Keith replied. "I'm scheduled for a couple of routine scouting missions as part of my training." 

"Are you able to come back to the castle for a few days? Maybe a couple of weeks?" 

"Of course. Shiro, what's going on?" 

There was no way Shiro could ask Keith to step up as black paladin again without some form of explanation, but he wasn't sure yet how much he wanted to reveal. 

"I don't want to say over comms. We'll talk when you get here." 

"Of course. I'll be there as soon as I can." 

"Good. And, Keith, thanks." 

"Any time." 

Shiro ended the call. He leaned his head back against the seat and felt the black lion's sense of gladness that Shiro was looking into this. 

"I'll get answers," Shiro promised the lion. Even through the weak bond, he felt the lion's gratitude.


	2. Chapter 2

Keith was as good as his word. A few hours after the call, Coran announced that there was a ship incoming. 

"It's Keith," he said, surprised. Pidge gave a squeak of excitement. 

"I have to go find Matt," she announced, disappearing from the command centre with a blur of speed. Lance shared an amused look with Hunk, who seemed pleased at the prospect of seeing Keith too. 

It seemed that there was no chance of Shiro getting a private conversation with Keith anytime soon, so he headed down to the docking bay with the others and was there as Keith climbed out of the small Blade fighter. 

"It's good to see you!" Hunk declared, launching himself at Keith and giving him a hug so tight it threatened to crack his armour. 

"Just when we thought we'd seen the last of you," Lance said, but he was smiling as he said it. "What are you doing here?" 

Keith gave him a surprised look, then his eyes found Shiro's. Shiro was standing behind the others, watching this welcome with more than a little anxiety in case he was forced to explain his efforts at secrecy to the whole team. Keith must have read some of what Shiro was feeling in his eyes because he said, "I missed you guys. I had a bit of a break in my training so I figured I'd come back and see if I could be of any use here." 

Before anyone could question that explanation, Pidge burst into the room, towing Matt along behind her. She pushed through the welcome party. 

"Keith! This is my brother. Matt, this is Keith." 

Keith was clearly amused by Pidge's enthusiasm but managed a polite smile as he said, "Nice to meet you. Pidge talked a lot about you." 

"I've heard quite a lot about you too," Matt said, shaking hands. 

"Anything Lance has told you is a total lie." 

"Hey!" Lance complained. 

There was more laughter and polite conversation, enquiries about the work with the Blade, and more enquiries about Pidge's rescue of Matt. Hunk insisted on preparing some food for them all, and so it was some time before Shiro could catch Keith's eye and jerk his head towards the door before slipping out of the room. Shiro waited and a few minutes later Keith made his excuses as well. They walked in silence back to Shiro's room. 

Inside, Shiro locked the door and raised the privacy shield that would block any sound from leaving the room. 

"Shiro, what's going on? You didn't tell them I was coming back. Why?" 

"It's complicated." Shiro sat down on his bed since the room didn't have any other seating. After a moment of hesitation, Keith sat down next to him. Shiro was glad. It would be easier to have this conversation without looking him in the eye. 

"I need you to take over as black paladin for a while," Shiro said. 

"But you're a much better black paladin than I am." 

Shiro decided this wasn't the time to address Keith's insecurities. "The black lion doesn't trust me like it used to, and I've found out why." He'd spent the past few hours thinking about this, working out how much to say. Keith wouldn't be satisfied unless he got some form of answer so Shiro had decided to give him at least a piece of the truth. Instead of giving that answer right away though, he started with a question: "You suspected that you might be part Galra before we tracked down the Blade of Marmora, didn't you?" 

"Yes," Keith said. 

"But you didn't say anything to any of us." 

"I didn't know for sure." 

"And you didn't know for sure how we would react, if we would still trust you if we knew the truth." 

"I guess," Keith said. 

"I suspect something about myself," Shiro said. "Something that makes me worry that the team wouldn't be able to trust me if they knew." 

"What are you talking about? Of course they'll trust you. _We_ trust you. No matter what." 

Shiro couldn't help smiling a little at that. "That's good to hear, but I think the Galra did something to me while I was their prisoner." 

"What sort of something?" 

"I'm not sure, exactly, and that's the problem. If I knew for sure, I could tell the others and we could deal with it. I'm afraid that they might have planted something in my mind, some sort of brain-washing, something they could trigger, I don't know. The black lion is worried that there's something wrong inside my head and so am I but don't know what they did and so I don't know how to fix it, or how much danger it puts everyone else in." 

"So you want me to step in as paladin while you figure it out?" Keith said. 

"Exactly. I want to go back to the base where I was held prisoner to find answers." 

"Wait. No. I thought you meant take over while we do tests and try to figure things out. You can't seriously be talking about going to a Galra base on your own." 

"That's exactly what I'm talking about. I need to go to that base to find answers." 

"So? Take us with you. Ask the Blade for help. We'll all go."

"You really think that would work? I can't exactly say to the others, 'I think I might be brainwashed by the Galra, now come to me to a Galra base.'" 

Keith grabbed Shiro's shoulder and forced him to turn so that he could look him in the eye. "It's too dangerous to go alone. If you think you're compromised, how do you know you're thinking straight about this?" 

That was a valid question. Shiro still felt like himself, still thought he was thinking rationally, but what if he only felt that way because he'd been compromised? But there was a more important point to be remembered. 

"This way," Shiro said, "the only person I'm putting at risk is myself. With you here, Voltron can still form, you can still fight. If anyone else comes with me, then they're at risk too." 

"We'd take that risk for you, Shiro," Keith said. And he knew that they would. They would risk their lives for Shiro, but was it worth them risking their lives for a fake? 

"Keith, I have my reasons. You said you trust me so, please, trust me that I have to do this myself. I don't want to bring Voltron into this." 

Keith was clearly warring with himself but at last he nodded. "Fine." 

"Thank you, Keith. I'll leave tonight, once the castle is put onto standby for the night. I won't ask you to lie for me but if you could just not tell anyone until they figure out for themselves that I'm missing, I'd appreciate it." 

"Fine," Keith said again. 

"I mean it, Keith. Don't tell the others about this until after I'm gone." 

"I said OK. I don't like this but if you don't want me to tell the others, I won't." 

Shiro let out a breath of relief. "Thank you, Keith." 

And then it was time to gather supplies for his mission. 

***

Matt was in the engine room, trying to get his head around how the massive ship moved itself, or at least trying to work out how the castle's systems were connected. He knew that he was surplus to requirements around here. He didn't fly one of the lions, so he needed to figure out another way to make himself useful and figuring out the technology of the castle seemed the obvious step. He might not have his sister's genius, but he was good with tech and he had her notes to get him started. If he learned this, he could help do repairs in battle or operate secondary systems while Coran was running the weapons. 

He needed to do something to be useful around here. He couldn't just be Pidge's brother for the rest of the war. 

He was pouring over a set of schematics when the door opened and Keith walked in. 

"Oh, hi," Matt said. From Pidge's stories, he was a little surprised that Keith would be in the engine rooms, but he supposed he wasn't the only one who might feel like he didn't fit. After all, Keith was the sixth paladin for five lions right now. 

"Hi, Matt. You on your own down here?" 

"Yeah. Just trying to learn all this stuff. Is there something I can help you with?" 

"Maybe," Keith said. "You're friends with Shiro, right?" 

"Of course. He saved my life. When we were captured, he was the one who kept me from getting slaughtered in the gladiator arena because I didn't know how to fight." 

"But you know how to fight now, right?" 

"Well enough. I've had plenty of practice." Matt had spent enough time in the training room since arriving here to know that he wasn't a match for any of the paladins in combat except possibly Pidge, and even that was only a possibly. He could hold his own though. Since the rebels had rescued him, he'd been put in the front lines against the Galra and it was a case of learn or die. He'd learned. 

Keith nodded. "I'm in a bit of a tricky situation. I may have promised someone not to say something to anyone, but I now want to do something without breaking that promise." 

"I'm not following," said Matt. 

"I can't explain what I'm talking about without breaking my promise. But I can suggest that maybe you might want to hang about the docking bay after the castle goes onto standby tonight." 

"OK?" Matt said, somewhat doubtful. 

"Don't tell the others I said anything. Oh, and you might want to pack some weapons." 

Keith left him then, and Matt could only stare after him, thoroughly confused. If this guy weren't a friend of Pidge's, he might have suspected a trap. What was going on? It was something to do with Shiro, otherwise why would Keith have asked about him? But beyond that, Matt couldn't guess much. The docking bay implied that someone was either coming or going, and the comment about packing implied going. Was Shiro going somewhere? 

That was the only interpretation that made any sense. Shiro was going somewhere and he'd asked Keith not to say anything, but Keith didn't want Shiro going alone. If Shiro was going somewhere dangerous, then Matt didn't want him going alone either. Matt left the ship schematics and went to figure out what he ought to pack.


	3. Chapter 3

The ship was quiet, with only the faint hum of distant engines, the whisper of breeze from the life support systems, and Shiro's footsteps along the hallways. He had a bag slung over his shoulder with enough food and water for several days, some basic medical supplies, and a Galra blaster. He wore his paladin armour, but he'd left his bayard with Keith, so he would make do with the blaster and his enhanced arm. It wasn't like he was trying to take on a whole fleet, so it should be enough. 

He made his way to the docking bay and went to one of the pods that Pidge had enhanced. The more recent engine enhancements were a little less explosive and the pod had a cloak which could last about half an hour. It would be long enough for him to approach the base get past the scanner systems. Shiro opened the pod’s canopy up and tossed his bag inside. 

"Going somewhere?" a voice asked from the shadows. Shiro spun, powering up his arm, and saw Matt step out from behind one of the other pods. 

"Matt. What are you doing up?" 

"Couldn't sleep. Figured I'd take a walk. How about you?" 

Shiro paused. "The same," he said. Matt raised an eyebrow. 

"With a bag of supplies?" 

Shiro tried to think of an excuse, but then he saw the bag in the shadows by Matt's feet. 

"I could say the same to you," Shiro said. There was only one explanation. "Keith told you." 

"He didn't tell me much of anything, something about a promise not to tell anyone something." Matt shrugged. "Made it really difficult to decide what to pack so I went for a bit of everything. I've got a plasma cutter, a knife, a couple of blasters, my comm interface kit complete with some encryption enhancements Pidge figured out, portable computer and a couple of connectors for hooking into Galran systems, my repair kit, EVA mask, general purpose scanner, and then I threw in a roll of duct tape because, well, duct tape. So, where are we heading?" 

" _We_ are not heading anywhere," Shiro said. " _You_ are heading back to bed." 

"I guess I'll take this with me then," Matt said. He pulled something out of his pocket. It was a small white cylinder with a glowing blue light on the end. 

"What is that?" Shiro asked. It was definitely a piece of Altean tech, but he had no idea what it was for. Matt tossed it in the air and caught it casually. 

"If you don't know," Matt said, "you'll have a tough time getting that pod to start. Especially since I'm the one with the repair kit." 

Shiro glared at him. "There are other pods." 

"Uh huh. Fifteen of them. Want to guess how many of these things I've got?" Matt waggled the cylinder. Shiro glared at him some more. 

"I could just take that off you. We both know I can take you in a fight." 

"And we both know you haven't the faintest idea where this should go. So are we going to stand here all night arguing or are you going to agree to let me come with you?" 

"It's not safe, Matt," Shiro said. He knew he couldn't just take the, whatever that was, from Matt which left him with only one option: talking Matt out of this. 

"If it's not safe for me to go with you, it's definitely not safe for you to go alone. And it's not like I'm doing anything particularly vital to the war effort around here. I'm not defending the galaxy or leading the coalition or anything important like the rest of them are. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't go with you?" 

Shiro considered that question. There was only one reason he could possibly give. "Because I don't want you to get hurt." 

"And how do you think I feel? You saved my life, Shiro, back in the arena. You've protected my sister. You're my friend. I'm going with you whether you like it or not." 

Minutes were ticking by. Shiro knew he wasn't going to convince Matt to stay, and subduing him by force wasn't going to do any good if he needed Matt to undo whatever sabotage he'd done to the pods. There was nothing Shiro could do, but still he tried one last time. He looked Matt in the eye and just said, "Please." 

"Not going to happen." Matt picked up his bag with considerable effort and carried it over to the pod Shiro had selected. He heaved the bag inside. It seemed the conversation was over. 

"Fine," Shiro said. 

Matt climbed up into the pod and Shiro climbed up beside him, taking the pilot's seat. Matt was already strapping himself in. 

"Aren't you going to fix the pod?" Shiro asked. 

"No need. This," Matt tossed the cylinder again, "is basically an Altean music box I found while exploring the store rooms. Nothing at all to do with the pod's functions." He pressed a button on the side and low notes of melody filled the cockpit and soothing, blue light glowed from the end of the device.

Shiro gaped at him. "But you said..." 

"Ah. I _implied_." 

"So you're telling me you did nothing to sabotage the pod, I could have taken off at any time I liked, and you wouldn't have had any way to stop me?" 

"Basically," Matt said. 

"Remind me never to play poker with you." 

Shiro fired up the pod, activating the controls to open the docking bay doors. As the pod rose slowly from the floor, the open star field spread out to welcome them. Shiro supposed he shouldn't be too surprised that Matt had out-smarted him, but clearly his time with the rebels had helped him learn how to lie. He was more than a little impressed, as well as being annoyed with himself for getting duped like this. Still, despite his concerns about the mission, he was glad not to be going alone. 

He entered the coordinates into the pod's engines and brought the main engines online before activating auto-pilot and bringing sensor alerts to scan for any possible threat. Without wormholes, it would take the better part of a day to reach the Galra base and Shiro intended to spend that time planning or sleeping so he could let the pod fly itself for now. With Matt along, he would have to reassess everything he'd planned. 

"So," Matt said as Shiro sat back in his seat and took his hands off the controls, "where are we going?" 

There were some things Shiro still wasn't ready to admit but, under the circumstances, it was clear he would need to be more forthcoming with Matt than he'd been with Keith. 

"A Galra science base orbiting a near-deserted ice planet. A while ago, I vanished in the middle of a battle. The next thing I remember, I was waking up on that science base and several weeks had passed. I need to find out what they did to me." 

"Makes sense," Matt said, "but why now? And why the secrecy? Why didn't you take Pidge and hack into the base's computers back when you first escaped?" 

Shiro weighed up the words, considered how much of the truth to reveal. If he said he wasn't sure he was really Shiro, Matt would have his doubts too and if the two of them were on this mission together now then he would need to Matt to trust him. But he would have to give an explanation as to why he'd left the rest of Voltron out of this. Lying would just cause more problems later and it was clear that Matt was stubborn enough to require answers. The truth then, or most of it. Shiro sighed. 

"When I came back to the team after my capture, the black lion didn't trust me. I didn't know why, but it had accepted Keith as paladin and wouldn't accept me. It took an emergency when Keith was off with the Blades to make it trust me enough to pilot it, but even then something felt different. I was trying to rebuild the connection to the black lion, trying to find out why it didn't trust me anymore and... it showed me some of my own memories of that base, what little I can remember. I think the Galra might have planted something in my mind, something buried beneath the conscious level. The black lion can sense it there and that's why it didn't want me as pilot." 

"Because the Galra might have planted something in you to... what? Control you? Make you work for them? Get you to feed them information? Or just to knock you out in the middle of a battle?" 

"I don't know." 

"But if the Galra have this ability, why haven't they used it?" 

"I don't know that either. That's why I have to go back to that base. I have to find out exactly what was done to me." 

There was a long pause while the stars raced past on the other side of the pod's view screen. 

"OK," Matt said. "I get that. I get why you need this mission. But why not tell the other paladins?" 

Because he was scared. He was scared of how they might look at him. He remembered how Allura had looked at Keith after his revelation, the awkwardness in the team. He was afraid that they might look at him that way. But he couldn't say all of that. 

"Voltron relies on trust," he said instead. "It took us a long time to figure out how to work together and form Voltron. If I tell them this, it could shatter that trust." 

"And sneaking and lying to them around won't?" Matt said. 

"I'll apologise when I know what's going on with me. At least if I have been brainwashed, that's a good excuse." 

"I'm not sure they're going to see it that way." 

Shiro cut off the conversation by bringing up the target system on the pod's display. 

"Come on," he said. "Let's talk about our tactics."


	4. Chapter 4

They made plans for a while, went through all the equipment Matt had packed and how they might use it, and devised a few contingencies in case things went wrong. The goal of the mission was simple enough: they were to break into the base, Matt would download the data from the computer core, and they would search the labs for anything they might need to fix whatever had been done to Shiro. If they could do all that without being noticed, so much the better. They had weapons but Matt would be happy not to use them. 

Once they were done with planning, they both tried to get a little sleep. Getting comfortable in a pod cockpit was no easy task, but Matt had learned to fall asleep waiting through pre-launch checks at the Galaxy Garrison, and then his time as a prisoner and with the rebels had taught him to sleep on anything. It was strange though how only a couple of weeks at the castle had made his body get used to comfortable beds again and he struggled to drift off. He managed to snatch a few hours' sleep but then he was awake again, stretching cricks out of his spine. Shiro stirred beside him, stretching out as well. 

"I'm getting old," Shiro commented as his back cracked alarmingly. 

"I wasn't going to say anything," Matt teased. 

Shiro tapped the console to check their location, translating the Altean time units into something more familiar. "We're still a couple of hours out. Want to go over the plan one last time?" 

"Well, I didn't pack a book so it's that or eye spy." 

"Couldn't fit a book in next to the kitchen sink?" Shiro asked. 

"You'll thank me when we need all this stuff. What were you planning on doing when you got there? Just blasting everything with your arm?" 

"It works." 

"There is such a thing as finesse." 

There was a familiar light-heartedness to their exchange that made it feel almost like they were back on the Galaxy Garrison mission, joking about in their small ship, where the biggest thing they'd had to worry about was collecting ice samples. That felt like a lifetime ago, like something that had happened to another person, but it was nice to know that a trace of it was still there between them. The nostalgic memories that filled Matt made him once again think of dad, of how it wasn't the same without him there to throw in the occasional dry comment or to threaten to separate them like they were misbehaving toddlers when the teasing because too serious. 

"You OK?" Shiro asked. 

"Yeah. Just thinking of the Kerberos mission." 

"Your dad." 

"Yeah. And my dad." 

"We'll find him," Shiro promised. "The more worlds we take back from the Galra, the more bases we take down, the more information we get and the more chance there is of us finding out where he is, or of him finding his way to us. Who knows, maybe your dad saw me and Pidge in the Voltron show and is already on his way to the castle." 

That was assuming he was still alive. Given how dangerous being a Galra prisoner could be, even without the violence of the war going on, that was a big assumption. Matt didn't voice that thought out loud though. It felt like even hinting at the possibility might make it real. 

Shiro reached out and put a hand on Matt's shoulder. It was hard to feel through the armoured suit he'd borrowed from the castle, but the weight of it was comforting all the same. 

"We'll find him," Shiro said again. Matt nodded. 

"I thought we were going to go over the plan again," Matt said. He didn't want to keep thinking about his dad. He wasn't the mission here and they had other things to worry about. 

"Right," Shiro agreed. He brought up the rough diagram he'd drawn from his memories of the base and they went over their planned route. The planning wasn't very detailed once they were inside because Shiro hadn't seen a great deal of the interior of the base and, from what he said, he hadn't been coherent enough to memorise the details of what he had seen. It gave them a starting point though and perhaps Shiro's memory would be jogged once they made it inside. 

The critical part of the plan was their approach to the base because if they were detected before they could breach the hull, then all of this was for nothing. They had the cloaking system Pidge had worked into the pod, which would give them enough time to make the approach, so long as they weren't detected on long-range scanners. Shiro wanted to approach from behind the planet the base was orbiting, but that presented another problem: they had no information on the orbital frequency of the base. They had to scan from a distance while approaching slowly and then move closer once they'd detected the base was on the other side of the planet. All the while hoping that their scans weren't detected. 

Matt was more than a little surprised at how willing Shiro was to rush into this mission with so little information. Normally he liked to be prepared. Back at the Galaxy Garrison, he'd triple checked everything before each stage of the mission. From what Matt had seen on the castle, he knew that Shiro could be reactive when he had to be, but he didn't like it. If there was a time pressure, he could go into a battle but given the choice he would always prefer to spend time on information-gathering. Matt had suspected from the start that there was something Shiro wasn't telling him about this mission and now he wondered if there was a time-pressure to it. Whatever the Galra had done to Shiro's head, was it starting to affect him? Or had the lion detected that it would kick in soon? 

Matt kept his questions to himself and focused on the mission. Shiro cut the pod's engines just before they reached the edge of standard Galra scanner range and let them drift forward on momentum like any other chunk of space debris. Matt started scanning the planet they were approaching. He kept the pod's scanners in passive mode, so that they picked up on radiation being reflected back from the icy planet but didn't send out any signals that might be noticed. It was less efficient, but it reduced their chances of detection. 

"I've got the base," Matt said after a moment, bringing up the scanner data. "Or something in orbit anyway." Sure enough, there was a blip on the scanner data where the energy reflected from the nearby star was significantly different from that being reflected by the planet below. The blip was moving in what would be a stable orbit, but Matt had the pod check the shape in case it matched up to a known silhouette. They didn't want to mistake a Galra cruiser for the base and approach too soon. 

Matt let the blip do two full orbits of the planet to be confident of the timings and to confirm that there wasn't anything else in orbit. The image they were getting of the base resolved as they approached letting the pod's computer render a more detailed image. It was definitely an orbiting base of Galra design. Both Shiro and Matt by now had enough experience of Galra design to make good guesses of where the sensors were located, and where they would be able to attach the pod to the hull without it being detected. The cloak would get them through the scanner field and then they would nestle in a blind spot behind one of the weapon turrets. Unless someone did a scan of the station from the outside, no one would see the pod. 

If they were lucky, there would be a computer link up near the weapon turret that Matt could use to access the base's systems without having to go as far as the labs. If the lab computers were isolated then they would have a long walk ahead of them, but they would deal with one problem at a time. 

"The base is about to pass behind the planet," Matt said. Shiro took hold of the controls and drew a breath, preparing. "Three. Two. One." 

Shiro fired up the pod's engines to full acceleration. Even with artificial gravity fields, Matt felt the pressure against the seat as they thrust forward, moving faster and faster with each second. He held his hand over the controls for the cloak, watching the timer on his screen counting down to the moment when the base would reappear. With every moment, the planet grew larger in front of them, a mass of ice and swirling clouds. Matt forced his eyes from it and onto the timer. The pod didn't have the manoeuvrability of the lions so he would need to rely on his calculations. The distance closed between them and the orbital path of the base. 

"Decelerate," he said, and Shiro slammed the engines into reverse, slowing their speed so that they didn't end up crashing into the base. They were still drifting forward, drawn on by the planet's gravity and their own momentum, but they needed to be able to manoeuvre on the lower-powered boosters that wouldn't be as obvious to scanners. 

"Cut engines," Matt said. A second later, he had the cloak up. Three seconds after that, the base emerged from the shadow of the planet. Matt's screen showed the orbital path of the base and their own trajectory. It was nearly perfect. Shiro had to nudge their position with the boosters a couple of times and then he was bringing them up underneath the base as it drifted in its endless circle of the planet. He guided the pod through the weaponry to their hiding place on the outside of the station. Matt barely even felt it as the pod made contact with the outside of the base and locked onto the hull. 

"Nice flying," Matt said. 

"The Galaxy Garrison didn't make me mission pilot for my looks," Shiro said. 

"Obviously," Matt teased. He powered down the cloak and Shiro cut everything except emergency power. Their pod was a dark mass against the hull of the space station and nothing more. 

"That was the easy part," Shiro said. "Let's get ready." 

Matt pulled out his EVA helmet and grabbed his weapons, taking the Galra blaster and a small stun gun. It didn't have the same power as the blaster, but it had the advantage that he could strap it to his leg without much weight, and he would always be happier about having a second weapon when going into Galra territory. He brought the portable computer and connectors but left most of the rest because they couldn't fit in the pockets beneath his coat. Shiro didn't bring much at all but then he was literally armed so he probably didn't need as much stuff. When they were ready, Shiro took hold of the plasma cutter and the two of them moved into the airlock but didn't empty the air out of it. 

Shiro had positioned the pod tight against the hull so that when the airlock door opened they faced a wall of black metal. The hope was that the seal was tight enough that breaching the hull wouldn't cause enough air to escape to be detected. Explosive decompression would give away their entrance to the Galra. 

Shiro started cutting and Matt waited, watching the hot line of melting metal as Shiro cut a rough circle through the hull. His breaths sounded loud in his helmet and each one reminded him of how little there was between him and death. He tried to think of other things, but all he could think of instead was what might be happening inside the station. Someone might have seen them cutting through. Even now, there could be a whole mess of sentry robots and Galra soldiers waiting on the other side for the moment they opened the hole. But there was nothing they could do about that except be ready and hope for the best. 

Shiro brought the cutter round to meet the first line. He glanced at Matt, who nodded and brought his blaster up, aiming at that circle of hull. Shiro clipped the plasma cutter to the wall of the pod and let it hang there, powering up his arm. The purple glow filled the small space. Shiro's voice sounded inside Matt's helmet, counting down from three, and then Shiro kicked the circle of metal inside. It hit the ground with a clang but there was no burst of escaping air, no rush of decompression. There was also no welcoming party ready to shoot them. 

Shiro let the way inside and Matt followed, his stomach lurching as he moved into the artificial gravity of the base and he had to readjust his perspective of down. But then it was done. The first part of their mission was completed. They'd successfully made it inside the Galra base.


	5. Chapter 5

Despite everything, Shiro was glad to have someone here to watch his back. He led the way through the base's corridors while Matt kept an eye out behind them for any trouble. At the clanking footsteps of a set of sentries, they ducked into an alcove, waiting for the robots to pass. No point in making this a firefight until they had to. 

One thing that could be said for the Galra was that they stuck to a standard design. It only took them a few minutes to locate the small security station attached to the weapon turret. Inside, voices were talking casually. This was either confirmation that no one had detected the pod's approach, or it was bait to lure them in. Shiro crept closer, listening, trying to pick up all the clues he could about the number of people inside and their positions. 

"I almost wish for a meteor drill or something," said one of the Galra voices. "It's been days since anything interesting happened." 

"Stop complaining. With the way the war's going, we should be lucky to be bored. These days, 'something interesting' means a rebel attack or Voltron blasting a whole fleet out of the sky." 

A third voice put in, "You talk like traitors. You should be eager to put your lives on the line for the sake of the empire." 

"I have four cubs back home. I'd like to survive long enough to see them again," the second Galra said. 

Beside Shiro, Matt shifted his blaster onto its strap across his back and pulled the stun gun from its holster instead. Shiro understood. This was a war and people died, but killing was still a difficult thing to do. Killing someone whose main concern was seeing their family was more difficult still. It was easier to think of Galra as alien monsters, it was what let them get through the battles and do what needed to be done, but they weren't all like Zarkon. The fact that the Blade of Marmora existed was proof that some Galra could be good and maybe not every soldier deserved death. A little mercy today wasn't going to hurt them in the long run and maybe sparing these lives could convince these people that Voltron was a better group to follow. 

As three voices inside continued their discussion, Matt and Shiro took up places on either side of the door. Shiro pointed at Matt's stun gun and used gestures to indicate that he should shoot the two on the left. He pointed to himself and indicated that he'd take out the third. Matt nodded. He used his fingers to give another silent count. As he closed his fist, the two moved. Shiro hit the button to open the door and charged through, aiming at the nearest Galra. 

The soldiers were stunned by surprise even before the first of them was stunned by Matt's gun. Shiro grabbed his target with his human arm, pinning him to the chair he sprawled in. His metal arm, he brought round to the soldier's neck, a burning threat of power that filled the air with the smell of singeing fur. The Galra froze, even as Matt took down the second of his targets with his gun and came fully into the room. 

The Galra Shiro was holding finally overcame his shock and started to fight back, so Matt blasted him too and the soldier slumped unconscious in Shiro's grip. Shiro powered down his arm. 

"They're not going to stay unconscious for long," Shiro said. 

Matt grinned. He reached under his coat and pulled a roll of duct tape from one of his pockets. It wasn't Earth duct tape, of course, but it seemed the Alteans had an equivalent in rolls of semi-transparent tape that glowed faintly blue and could seal almost anything. They presumably found it as useful as Pidge and Matt did because the castle stores were full of the stuff. Matt started peeling strips but Shiro held out his hand to him. 

"I'll do that. You deal with the computer." Shiro jerked his head towards the console and took the tape. He bound the Galra soldiers tightly, looping tape round their arms and legs, covering their mouths. He used half the roll making sure they weren't going to get out of there and he checked the floor around them for anything that might be sharp enough to cut the tape. He didn't need these soldiers getting loose and sounding the alarm. 

"I have access to the main systems," Matt announced, "but it looks like any information relating to experiments and the labs is on a different system, isolated from me. It must be a security feature." 

"Can you get around it?" 

"I don't know. Definitely not quickly. It looks like I'll need to access the computers in the labs to get the data you need." 

That was what Shiro had been hoping to avoid, but it wasn't particularly surprising. They'd planned for this. 

"Can you get schematics of the base?" Shiro asked. 

"Let me... Yes." Matt tapped something on the console. A diagram appeared on the screen, layers of floor plans and maps to show them their way around. Different areas started to light up as Matt continued typing. "There are multiple labs, a lot of storage for equipment and supplies, quarters for the soldiers, some of the standard life support and engineering sections, and, huh?" He fell quiet. 

"What's the huh? What have you found?" 

"There's something labelled a cell. Just the one. But there are a whole mess of alarms and automated security systems around it." A room need the middle of the base lit up red on Matt's schematics. 

Shiro felt himself go cold. That had to be it. That had to be him. Shiro had come here hoping that he was wrong and he almost wanted to tell Matt to ignore that room, to just go on without confirmation. Instead, he forced himself to speak. 

"Can you get more information on the cell?" 

"Yeah. All the security systems are connected. I can... hah!" At his exclamation of triumph, security camera footage appeared next to the floor plans and Shiro got his first look at the man in the cell. It was hard to see details. The man was huddled in the corner, arm pressed against the wall so Shiro couldn't see if it was metal or flesh. His head was slumped forward so his face was obscured, but there was a streak of white in the matted brown mess and the shape was unmistakably human. Matt might not realise it yet, but Shiro knew without a moment of doubt that he was looking at himself. It filled him with a sensation of nausea that he'd been violated in this way, his very being stolen. That feeling was made worse by the knowledge that he was stealing those feelings too, that they rightfully belonged to the man in the cell. 

He pushed those feelings down. He'd deal with them when he'd put this right. 

"Can you disable the security around the cell?" Shiro asked. 

"Give me a few minutes. The trick is to do it without alerting any of the other security stations that there's an issue." 

That made sense. If Matt just turned everything off then the soldiers on the base would instantly be on alert. Still, Shiro hated the wait. He forced his eyes away from the image of himself and towards the floor plans. He plotted out a route from where they were to the cell. It was a route that would take them close to one of the labs. 

"OK," Matt said. "I've got the video footage running on a loop and I've disabled all the alarms and automatic weapons. There will still be a lock on the door but we'll be able to blast it without setting off any alerts." 

Shiro pointed out their route. 

"You'll go to the lab," he said, "and download everything you can from the computers. I'll go on to the cell and come back to the lab so we can go back to the pod together." 

"Are you sure it's a good idea to split up?" Matt asked. 

"We don't know how long it will take them to notice that you've disabled the cell's security. We want to be as fast as possible." 

Matt nodded, but he obviously wasn't happy about it. 

"Just stay on comms," he said, "in case either of us run into trouble." He seemed a little nervous at the prospect of being left on his own in a Galra base, which was understandable, but if Shiro had to wait around for Matt to hack the computer system it would increase their chances of getting caught. Besides, he wasn't sure he'd be able to cope with the waiting. The person in that cell must have been there for weeks, in all the time Shiro had been back on the castle. Every second he was left there felt like another second Shiro was stealing from his life. 

Matt detached his computer gear and stowed it beneath his coat again. He took his gun in hand. 

"Ready," he announced. Shiro nodded and then they were moving again. 

The journey deeper into the base was a little more eventful, with them running into a group of sentry robots on patrol. Shiro dealt with them, slicing through them with his arm before they got off more than a couple of shots. It felt good to destroy something. He let his emotions pour out in a whirl of punches and slices that left the metal in chunks at his feet, while Matt just stood there, gun in hand, staring at him. 

"That was cool," Matt said. Shiro realised that this was the first time Matt had seen him in close combat since he'd got the arm. They'd sparred in the training room but Shiro had never let loose in front of him like this, using the arm to the full extent of its abilities. 

"Come on," Shiro said. "Let's keep moving." 

They couldn't easily hide the mess of robot parts, so speed was more critical now than ever. If another patrol came across the one Shiro had just demolished, the base would be on alert despite Matt's efforts on the security system. So Shiro set off at a steady run and Matt hurried along behind him. 

They reached the junction where they were to split up and Shiro ran on, the comm coming to life in his ear. He could hear Matt's pants as he ran, a comforting presence in his ear even as he moved on alone. 

There were more sentries standing guard in front of the cell with a straight run between Shiro and them. There was no cover, so Shiro dodged as much as he could in the narrow corridor as he raced towards them, but a blaster beam caught his left side. Heat burned despite the protection of his armour, but he kept moving. He sliced his arm across one gun and then he was too close for any of the sentries to use their guns easily. He hacked them apart, breathing hard from the exertion but finding a strange joy in the rush of adrenaline. He drove his glowing fist straight through the chest of the last sentry and the robot crumpled into a sparking mess in front of him. 

It was only then that he let himself notice the pain in his side. His armour had held, but it hadn't kept all the energy out. He groaned as he tested his movements, aware that he'd have a nasty burn to deal with. 

"Are you alright?" Matt's voice asked in his ear. 

"Got grazed by a blaster. I'll be fine. What's your status?" 

"I'm in the lab. Starting the download now but there's a lot of data. Might take me a few minutes." 

"I'm at the cell. I'll be back with you soon." 

Shiro inspected the heavy door in front of him. He touched the control panel for the lock and saw that it required some sort of pass card as well as a hand scan. He knew his hand wouldn't count, so he let the power flow through it again and drove his fist straight into the wall. He grabbed at whatever he could find in there and yanked, pulling out wires and circuit boards in a cloud of sparks. 

The door clicked, opening just a crack. 

Smiling grimly, Shiro shoved his metal hand into that crack and heaved. His side protested at the effort, pain burning against his skin as his muscles worked, but he kept going, hauling the door open wider until he could step into the gap that he'd made. 

Inside the cell, the man was staring at him, shock and confusion written on the all too familiar face. Shiro looked into his own face, but a face shrunken and pale from lack of food, hidden behind a mess of dirt that was streaked with the tracks of tears. Fading bruises were half obscured by the tangle of hair and the clothes hung off a frame that had withered over the weeks of captivity. A clamp was locked around his metal arm, keeping it from operating as a weapon. Shiro took it all in, and that feeling of nausea was back, the guilt that he had been living on the castle, with his friends, with Hunk's cooking, with hope for the future, while this man had been here, alone and hurting in this cell. 

"It's..." Shiro started to say, but didn't manage to get any further. The man in the cell launched himself off the floor and straight at him, slamming into him and driving all of his weight against his injured side. Shiro cried out in pain as the two of them went sprawling.


	6. Chapter 6

Matt had nearly finished his download of the lab computers. The lab computers might have been isolated from the main systems, but thankfully they were linked to each other so he was able to copy everything onto his portable computer. He didn't worry about decryption or seeing what he was getting, he just grabbed every file those computers held. He and Pidge could work out what was useful back on the castle. 

He was aware of the Galra scientists behind him, unconscious from his stun gun. He wondered if he should have used the blaster, if killing them would have been the sensible thing to do, but it was hard to look someone in the eye and pull a trigger. Blasting sentry robots was one thing. Shooting someone in the back as he bent over some sort of sample tube was another. 

Matt didn't bother with the samples. The data was what he was here for and that was what he would focus on. 

He heard Shiro start to say something and then a cry of pain came over the comms.

"Shiro?" 

There were more sounds, grunts of pain and effort. 

"Shiro?" Matt asked again. He didn't get an answer. Shiro was definitely alive, but the heavy breathing coming over the comms didn't sound good. He was in trouble. 

Matt wanted to run straight out there, but he didn't want to leave the data transfer when he was still so close. The final millimetres of the progress bar seemed to take forever and every moment he heard more sounds of exertion over the comms. 

"Stop," Shiro said. "I'm here..." But his words were cut off with another sound of pain. 

Matt wanted to scream at the computer to work faster. He watched that final bit of transfer and then yanked his computer away, not caring that he was leaving half the connectors dangling from the console. He fumbled to get the computer back into his pocket as he ran and then brought up his blaster. 

Shiro was trying to talk again, "I'm on your side," but it didn't sound like his opponent was listening. 

"Shiro, I'm on my way to you," Matt said. 

Shiro gasped out one more word, "Stun." 

"Got it." 

Matt shifted his blaster into his left hand and drew the stun gun. He could hear the sounds of the fight up ahead of him now as well as over the comms. He rounded the corner and saw Shiro locked in a struggle with the ragged prisoner. Shiro's arm was powered down as he tried to subdue rather than hurt. 

Shiro spun them both so that Matt would have a clear shot, and Matt set a stunner blast straight into the prisoner's chest. 

In the instant of firing, Matt saw the prisoner's face. Their eyes met and Matt saw Shiro staring out at him, astonishment written on his features. Then he was unconscious and the Shiro in paladin armour lowered him gently to the floor. 

Matt walked closer, staring at the man on the floor in a sort of daze. It was Shiro. His face, his metal arm, that streak of white in his hair. He was in a bad way but there could be no doubt who Matt was looking at. 

"They cloned you," Matt said. 

The Shiro in Paladin armour said quietly, "I think they cloned him." 

Matt looked up at him then and saw the fear in his eyes, fear of how Matt would react. The pieces slotted into place. No wonder Shiro hadn't wanted to tell anyone about this mission. He'd talked about not wanting the others to stop trusting him and it wasn't because of some potential brain-washing, it was because he wasn't really Shiro. No wonder the black lion had been reluctant to let this Shiro pilot it. The Galra had captured Shiro and copied him somehow and of course it made more sense that the real Shiro would remain a prisoner while the copy was allowed to go back to Voltron. 

But if the Shiro standing in front of Matt now was a copy, he was a good enough copy that he'd been able to recall the same events, to talk to him as the real Shiro would. And his reaction on learning that he was a copy was to launch a rescue mission. That had to mean something. 

Right now, they were standing in the middle of an enemy base. They didn't have time to deal with this now and Matt certainly didn't have time for the freak-out he would very much like to have. They would get to safety and then they would figure out what to do next. Matt handed his blaster to the Shiro in paladin armour and crouched down so that he could heave the unconscious Shiro up over his shoulders. 

"Let's get back to the pod," Matt said. 

"You still want me to come with you?" Shiro asked. 

"Of course I want you to come with me. I need to yell at you for leaving such an important piece of information out of the mission planning." 

He was rewarded by the fear on Shiro's face fading just a little, but the tension was still there and it wasn't all because they were in the middle of a Galra space station. Matt started moving, feeling the weight of the other Shiro pressing down on him, but knowing that the weight wasn't anything like what it should have been. This man seemed less like Shiro than the man hurrying beside him now. It was hard to know what to think, who to trust, hard to know what to feel. 

When the next sentry patrol found them, Shiro used the blaster to mow them down without ever slowing and they hurried through the corridors. An alarm starting blaring and they quickened their pace. Matt struggled to focus on anything except keeping moving, the weight of the unconscious body over his shoulder seeming to get heavier with every step. Shiro cleared their path and then Matt was collapsing through the hole and into the body, lowering the unconscious Shiro down while the conscious one climbed past him to seal the airlock and fire up the engines. 

Matt lay the unconscious Shiro down on the bench-like seat in the back of the pod and peered through the small hatch into the pilot area. Matt didn't want to leave this other Shiro on his own back here, but he didn't feel like shutting himself in, so he left that narrow hatch open. It might be a risk to let this Shiro have access to the pilot seats, but it seemed like a better option than splitting themselves up. 

Through the hatch, Matt could see the changing displays as Shiro brought the ship away from the base. The star field and planet below wheeled about as the pod dodged and wove, flying a path around a spray of laser fire that set off proximity alerts. 

"Why aren't we cloaked?" Matt asked. 

"We are. They're firing in all directions. I guess they hope they'll get lucky. Make yourself useful and see if there's a pain killer in the medkit back there." 

Shiro's teeth were gritted as he spun and dove, dodging the pod about until they were far enough away from the station for the laser fire to be more dispersed. There didn't seem to be much Matt could do to help, so he handed over a pain killer tablet through the hatch as requested and then stayed quiet and focused on the unconscious Shiro. He must have freaked out to see himself in the doorway in paladin armour. He must have thought the other Shiro was there to kill him or something, part of some Galra plot. He’d been so convinced that his copy was an enemy that he hadn’t even let Shiro get a sentence out. Matt considered their options and then pulled out the roll of duct tape. He wanted to make sure they could have a conversation when this Shiro woke up and keeping him from attacking them on sight seemed like a good idea. 

He bound Shiro's hands in front of him and then put a few loops around his legs for good measure. That wouldn't be too uncomfortable for him, but it should be enough to keep him restrained long enough for them to talk and make it difficult for him to get through the hatch to the ship's controls. That done, Matt pulled the rest of his bag of supplies into that back area with the rescued Shiro, noticing as he did so that the conscious Shiro was plotting a course, not out of the system but towards the sun. 

"What are you doing?" 

"We've used up half our cloak time dodging laser," Shiro answered. "If I just fly away we'll still be in sensor range when the cloak drops and they'll send fighters after us. I'm going to put the sun between us and the station while we wait for the cloak to recharge." 

It was a sensible plan. Matt shouldn't have doubted that Shiro had a good reason for his plan, but he realised that he had doubted, just for a moment. It was hard not to doubt, seeing the two Shiros in front of him and knowing that they couldn't both be real. 

Almost at that thought, the Shiro in front of Matt started to stir. 

"It's OK," Matt said. "You're safe." 

Shiro's eyes opened. He blinked at Matt from behind a curtain of tangled hair. 

"Matt?" 

"It's me." 

Shiro's eyes flicked to the Shiro in the pilot's seat, they fell to his taped wrists, to the gun strapped on Matt's leg. He was surveying his surroundings, weighing his options like a chessmaster analysing the board before a critical move. Matt considered his options too. He could try to talk Shiro out of whatever he was planning, but on the base he must have attacked the rescuer Shiro almost at once, which meant he might not be in the most receptive mood for conversation until he'd exhausted the fight options. So Matt could either try to talk to him and wait for Shiro to seize on an opening, or he could give him an opening. 

"Do you want something to eat?" Matt asked. "Or drink? We've got some supplies." 

He turned to the bag beside him, using the motion to disguise his hand going to his gun. He adjusted the power settings by feel. 

Shiro launched himself off the bench, lunging at Matt. Matt drew his gun and fired the second he started moving. Shiro slumped down again. 

The Shiro in the pilot seat spun to see what just happened. 

"What the hell?" he asked. 

"It's on the lowest setting," Matt replied. "He'll be awake again in a few minutes and if he knows he's not going to get anywhere fighting us, maybe this time we can have a conversation." 

"I can't believe you just shot him. He is probably the real Shiro." 

"Probably?" 

The Shiro in the pilot seat shrugged. "Probably is all I've got."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully when I talk about Shiro and Real Shiro it's clear which of them is performing any given action in this chapter. Writing a clone story makes identifying characters a pain.

It was hardly surprising that the real Shiro thought he was an enemy, Shiro thought. After all, the real Shiro had been in that cell for weeks being experimented on, having his body and mind copied. It was entirely possible that he knew what they'd been doing there, knew that the Galra had been trying to make an imposter version of him. Of course his first reaction would be to fight the imposter. Shiro didn't know what to say to convince the real him that they were on the same side. He guessed Matt didn't either or all the shooting wouldn't have been necessary. 

"I can tell you're awake," Matt said. "Do you want something? Food goo? Water?" 

There was a pause. Shiro put the pod on autopilot back towards the castle and undid the straps of the pilot's chair so he could turn and look at the other version of himself through the hatch. The prisoner Shiro eyed them both suspiciously, but he didn't try to attack them this time. 

"Water," he said, his voice sounding croaky and parched. Matt still kept a hand on his gun as he retrieved a water tube from the bag and held it out. Real Shiro took it in his bound hands and tore open the nozzle with his teeth. Both the food goo and the water were stored in tubes with straw-like nozzles on the ends so that they could be consumed in zero gravity without going everywhere. Real Shiro sucked the tube dry in a few seconds and then studied the packaging, no doubt recognising it as having come from the supplies on the castle. He must recognise the pod too. 

"What's going on?" Real Shiro asked. 

"This is a rescue," Matt said. He held out another tube of water. Real Shiro took it, drinking this one more slowly. 

"I don't feel very rescued." Real Shiro held up his bound hands to indicate his meaning. 

Shiro didn't know what to say, didn't know how to explain any of this, so he let Matt do the talking. 

"You keep trying to kill him," Matt said, jerking his head towards Shiro. 

"He's a Galra clone. An imposter made to take control of Voltron for the Galra." 

Shiro already knew that, but hearing it said in his own voice made the truth of it strike home. He wasn't real. He was a fake. He was part of some elaborate trap, just a weapon in the Galra's arsenal. 

"I thought I was real," he said. Real Shiro's eyes locked on his, suspicious and angry. "I thought I was you. They didn't just copy your body, they copied your memories. I... I feel like Shiro." 

"You're not me." 

It was Matt who answered, "He's close enough to being you that the second he figured out he was a copy he started planning your rescue." 

Real Shiro looked between them again, still seeming doubtful. 

"What are you going to do with me?" he asked. 

"Take you back to the Castle of Lions," Matt said. "I've got all the data I extracted from the Galra lab and Pidge can do some tests on the two of you, figure out exactly what the Galra did. We'll figure it out from there." 

"You know he's a Galra spy and you still want to take him to the castle?" Real Shiro asked. 

"I've been at the castle for weeks," Shiro said. That seemed to be the wrong thing to say. Real Shiro looked at him with utter loathing on his face. Shiro could understand why; Real Shiro must feel like he'd stolen his life from him. Whatever torment he'd been going through, he knew that Shiro had been free and happy that entire time. He must feel cheated and violated in a hundred different ways. 

"I'm sorry," Shiro said. 

"You're sorry? You stole my life from me and you're sorry?" The exact thought that had been flowing through Shiro's mind came out of the Real Shiro's mouth, proving once again how close their thoughts ran. 

"I didn't know I was stealing it." But he should have known. When the black lion had chosen to keep Keith as paladin, Shiro should have known. He should have paid more attention to his memories of that base. There were clues and signs he should have picked up on. If he'd just paid more attention, if he'd tried communicating with the black lion sooner, perhaps he could have saved Real Shiro weeks ago. If he was half the paladin he'd thought he was, he would have seen the truth. 

Matt held out more tubes to Real Shiro, offering water and food goo. This time, he took the goo, eating it in slow mouthfuls. 

"I'm sure Hunk will make something better for you when we get back to the castle," Matt said. "When Pidge first brought me back, he made milkshakes. I still can't believe you guys have a cow." 

"Pidge found you?" Real Shire asked. 

"Yeah. I left a coded message in case my dad escaped the Galra and came looking for me. I did not expect my little sister to show up at my hiding place as one of the Voltron paladins." 

"Sounds like I missed a lot." 

"Quite a lot," Shiro said. "Sorry. I don't know if this will be much comfort to you, but the war's been going well. Keith's been working with the Blade of Marmora so Lance has taken over flying the red lion and Allura is now Blue's pilot." He decided not to mention that the change of lions had started because they were missing him as the black paladin. As it was, the news didn't seem to comfort Real Shiro at all. It probably didn't help to hear that someone else was doing a good job of copying his life. 

"You've been flying as the paladin of the black lion," Real Shiro said. 

"Yes. But the connection hasn't felt as strong as it used to. That's what let me figure out, well, this." He gestured towards Real Shiro. 

Matt said, "If the black lion is willing to trust him enough to act as paladin, can you trust him enough not to try and attack him again?" 

Real Shiro studied Shiro for a minute before saying, "I only have your word that the black lion trusts him." 

Shiro took that as a good sign, because he knew how the man in front of him thought. If Real Shiro were convinced they were enemies, he wouldn't have hesitated to agree because it would get them to relax and let their guard down a little. The fact that he didn't want to lie to them meant that, however many doubts he might have, he was open to the possibility of them being friends. Being honest that he didn't trust them was a sign that he was at least considering trusting them. It was time to offer some of that trust back. 

"Cut him loose," Shiro told Matt. Matt didn't question it, didn't hesitate. He just reached into his bag of supplies for the knife. Real Shiro held out his bound hands and Matt started slicing away at the tape. The tape was tough and Matt was being careful not to cause accidental injuries, so it took a few minutes to get Real Shiro's arms free. Then Matt set to work on his legs and Real Shiro started poking at the clamp around his arm. 

"I might have something in my repair kit I can use on that," Matt said. He handed Real Shiro the knife so that he could cut the tape on his legs himself, while he dove back into his bag and brought out his small toolkit, checking through for the right item. Giving Real Shiro a knife might be a dangerous move, but if Matt was going to unlock the clamp around his arm, that would be a hell of a lot more dangerous than a knife anyway. They might as well give him this sign that they trusted him and maybe it would help convince him to return the trust. 

Matt moved to sit beside Real Shiro to reach his arm. He muttered and swore under his breath as he worked on the clamp, but it came free. Shiro waited, ready to power up his own arm at the first sign of a threat, but Real Shiro just thanked Matt and went back to hacking at the tape around his legs. 

Once he was free, Real Shiro moved through the hatch and into the passenger seat beside Shiro. Matt looked like he might say something, but Shiro let this happen. He wanted to show that they were friends and that started with trusting Real Shiro to sit beside him, but, for now, he still kept a wary eye on Real Shiro in between his checks on their progress. 

"I want to know everything," Real Shiro said. "Everything that's happened since I was captured." 

So Shiro started talking. He told the story of waking up in the lab and his escape, his run in with the rebels and his theft of a Galra fighter. This time, he included the detail of Black refusing to let him be the paladin again and how he'd taken a tactical role in their battles while Keith had flown Black. He talked about Keith working with the Blade of Marmora and some of their victories. He talked about needing Black in battle and how he'd been accepted again as paladin but how it hadn't felt the same. He explained how he'd realised what was going on and organised this rescue mission. 

He needed water by the time he was done, his throat dry from all the talking. Real Shiro had listened throughout, asking a few questions for clarification but otherwise just letting him talk. Now, Shiro swapped places with Matt and sat in the back, sipping at water, while Matt explained his story. Shiro took another pain killer for the burn on his side, which had been aggravated by moving about the pod, and listened as well. Matt talked about being sent to a factory as a Galra slave and how he'd been rescued by the rebels. He talked about how he'd managed to hack into the systems of a major Galra weapons plant, an act which had earned a bounty on his head, and how he'd used that information as part of a major slave uprising that had destroyed that weapons plant and freed an entire system. He skimmed over the details of the fight itself, simply saying that a lot of people had died and that the rebels had built a monument to their sacrifice. Knowing he had a price on his head, Matt had decided it was best to let it be known that he'd died in the battle too, but he'd left a coded message on his grave site just in case his dad ever found his way there. Of course, he explained, Pidge had found the message instead and tracked him down and taken him back to the Castle of Lions. 

By the time they were both done with their stories, hours had passed and Real Shiro slipped into a dose for a while. Shiro couldn't relax, knowing that soon he would be back on the castle and he would have to face all the others knowing that he wasn't who he'd thought he was. He would see them all knowing he was an enemy construction and he would have to deal with that. He wasn't sure what they'd do to him. He wasn't sure what he'd do to himself if he were in Real Shiro's position. 

He wasn't any closer to knowing when the castle came into view in front of them and Matt nudged Real Shiro awake. 

"I didn't tell the others about this," Shiro admitted, as Matt took control of the pod away from the autopilot and guided it towards the docking bay. "I didn't tell them I suspected I was a clone. They'll probably freak out about when they see you." 

"They'll also probably be really mad at you for sneaking out," Matt pointed out. 

"That too." 

Shiro wasn't looking forward to the next few minutes. It had to be faced but it wasn't going to be pleasant and he wasn't sure he'd like the outcome. The castle's scanners would have picked up the approach of the pod so it was hardly surprising that Shiro saw the rest of the team gathered in the docking bay as Matt came in to land. Shiro got to his feet and braced himself for the worst as Matt opened the pod's canopy so that they could climb out. 

"Shiro," Allura said, already launching into full lecture mode, "you are the last person I would have expected to perform such a reckless..." She trailed off, because both Shiro and Real Shiro had jumped down from the pod. Matt landed beside them as faced the astonished stares from the rest of the team. 

"What the hell?" Lance said, though it was obvious everyone was thinking it. 

"Two Shiros?" Hunk said. "Is one of you a robot? Or did you go through to another reality again? What's going on?" 

"Shiro?" Keith asked, looking between the two of them. 

Shiro wasn't sure he wanted to be there when the others learned the truth and the pain killers were wearing off again. His side was throbbing but mostly he just wanted to escape. He didn't want to see how they looked at him when they learned what he really was. 

"If he can bond with the black lion first try," Shiro said, "he's the real Shiro." He gestured towards the man beside him. "Matt can fill you in. I'm going to the infirmary to shut myself in a healing pod for a few hours." 

He stalked off before anyone could object. He would let his side heal and then, when he woke up, he would learn what they'd decided to do about him. It wouldn't surprise him if he woke up to face guns and imprisonment, but at least he wouldn't have to sit through them deciding not to trust him. 

Behind him, he heard Lance say again, "What the hell?"


	8. Chapter 8

Matt did not appreciate being left to face the paladins and try to explain the situation. He'd heard the stories in the pod but he wasn't the person who ought to be telling the story now. Still, he had to remember that Shiro had been hurt during the mission and this had to be tough on him. He could cut him a little slack. 

It was the Shiro who'd been rescued who explained, "When I was captured by the Galra in the battle with Zarkon, they managed to make a copy of me. I assume they wanted a spy who could infiltrate Voltron." 

"Then he," Allura looked towards the door. "He's a spy?" 

"That doesn't make sense," Lance said. "If he's a spy, then why hasn't he done anything, you know, spyish?" 

"Yeah," Hunk agreed. "Yeah. He could have blown up the castle or stabbed us in our sleep or poisoned our food supplies." He looked particularly horrified at that last one. 

"That is an excellent point," Allura said. "If he was working for the Galra, why has he been helping us fight them?" 

"Yeah," said Hunk. He stepped up in front of the rescued Shiro, pointing an accusing finger. "How do we know you're not the spy, huh?" 

Shiro looked angry at that, ready to snap and shout at someone, so Matt stepped in. "There is one way to be sure. The black lion. It knows its true paladin." 

"Oh," said Pidge. She'd been noticeably quiet during the brief discussion but now understanding showed on her face and she spoke up. "That's why the black lion didn't let Shiro fly it at first. He isn't the true paladin. But it trusted him in the end which must mean that the copy is significantly like the real Shiro. The Galra must have copied his brain in every microscopic detail. I mean, who we are, what we think and feel, is all encoded in the structures and chemical makeup of our brains. If you could copy that accurately enough, you could create a copy of someone identical to the original." 

The Shiro beside Matt tensed again at those words. 

"He's not me," he said. 

"Let's just put this to the test and see what the lion thinks," Matt said, and Shiro nodded. He seemed eager to establish himself as the original, so they all walked together towards the black lion's hanger. On the way, Shiro expanded on the story a little bit, not that there was a great deal to his side of the story. He'd been captive a long time and he obviously didn't want to talk much about whatever experiments had been done to him on the Galra base. 

"Should we be keeping an eye on the other Shiro?" Hunk asked, as this Shiro finished. "I mean, should we put a guard on him or something?" 

"I don't think that's necessary," Pidge said. "If the Galra did make him as a spy, it seems to have backfired. He's been acting like the real Shiro." 

"The Galra might have implanted something inside him," Keith said. "When he asked me to come back here and take over as the black paladin for a while, that's what he said he was worried about. He didn't mention the whole clone thing, but it makes sense that if the Galra made him, they might have made him with some sort of trigger that would make him turn against us." 

They reached the lion's hanger. Matt wasn't sure what he was hoping for. A part of him almost wanted this to fail, wanted to have some confirmation that the Shiro he'd been thinking of as a friend since he'd arrived really was that person. But that wouldn't solve the problem. In the end, the test was over in moments. As soon as Shiro walked in, the lion's eyes lit up. It lowered its head down and opened us mouth, extending the ramp for Shiro to enter. Allura followed inside for confirmation, but it was clear the lion had accepted him, before he'd even set foot inside. This man was the real Shiro, which meant the one who had just fought at Matt's side, the one who had welcomed him here with a promise to help find his father, was a fake. 

Shiro walked out of the lion's head a couple of minutes after he'd walked in and the others were all around him with tentative hugs and words of welcome, but Matt couldn't help but feel bad for the other guy, who shared Shiro's memories, his sense of self, but who was now proved to be something else entirely. 

Hunk was already talking about fixing Shiro something to eat, despite Shiro's protests that he'd eaten in the pod. 

"But look at you," Hunk said. "You need a good meal. And we have to celebrate." 

"There's a more pressing concern, Hunk," Allura said. "We cannot forget that the other Shiro is a Galra creation. We must decide what to do about him." 

They couldn't put off Hunk from his desire to do something about Shiro's wasted body, so they ended up having their discussions in the kitchen, all of them talking and arguing while Hunk mixed ingredients and prepared a meal. Matt noticed that Shiro was quiet about his opinions. He'd stressed that the other Shiro wasn't him and that seemed to have been accepted, and now he was letting the others decide what should or shouldn't be done. 

Pidge stuck to her guns about the fact that Shiro's mind and memories were what made him who he was. If the Galra had copied that accurately enough then he would act the way the real Shiro would. The fact that he'd been helping to fight the Galra was a point in favour of that argument. She wanted to trust him. Lance was less sure, worried about the threat, but not willing to suggest hurting someone who, until about an hour ago, they'd thought of as their friend. Keith was a surprisingly reasonable voice suggesting caution but kindness. They wouldn't treat the other Shiro as though he were an enemy, not after all he'd done for them, but they had to consider the possibility that he was a potential enemy. They didn't know what sort of brainwashing might have been going on. They didn't know what might set him off. 

"He told me himself he was worried about that," Keith pointed out. "We've got the data from the science base. The tech wonders," he jabbed a thumb in Pidge's direction, "can see what we can find out from that, but until we know we have to take precautions."

He spoke like a leader and even the Shiro sitting beside him didn't argue. There were nods of agreement from around the table and the decision was made. The other Shiro had to be treated as a Galra creation, a potential weapon that could threaten Voltron and all of those living in this castle. 

They outlined their plan as Hunk set out plates of a yellowish slab decorated with purple leaves. Shiro dug into the food with quiet thanks and Hunk beamed as his meal was rapidly devoured. Matt ate his food with rather less enjoyment, feeling a sort of sickness in his stomach. He couldn't argue with any of the points made about needing to take precaution, but it still felt like he was betraying his friend to let them make these rules. 

"Do we even know where he is now?" Lance asked. 

"The infirmary," Matt said. 

"That's what he told us. But if he really is a spy, how do we know he's not out there doing something dangerous while we're all in here talking about him?" 

There was a nervous silence. 

"I'll head down there," Matt said. "I'll explain the situation when he wakes up." 

It seemed like the least he could do. He owed Shiro the truth. 

Before Matt could leave, the Shiro beside him now reached out and put a hand on Matt's arm. He offered a small smile. "Thank you. I didn't really say it back on the pod. Thank you for coming to save me." 

"You would have done the same for me," Matt said. Matt owed Shiro his life and he knew he would go to rescue him any time it was needed. He would rescue either of them. 

Shiro stood and pulled Matt into a hug. One which Matt returned somewhat awkwardly, thinking of another hug, when the other Shiro had welcomed him here. Every interaction felt tainted now, like being friends with one of them was betraying the other. 

"One more thing," Pidge said, climbing from her place at the table and approaching them. Matt turned from Shiro and a punch landed hard against his arm. 

"Ow," Matt complained, rubbing at the point of impact. "You're a lot stronger than you used to be." 

Getting punched in the arm by his little sister had been fine when she was the scrawny kid he'd left behind on Earth, but now she was in combat and training on a regular basis and had muscles that hadn't been there before. His arm throbbed from the impact of her fist. 

"Good," she said. "Don't you dare go off on a mission without telling me ever again." 

The force of her punch was nothing against the force in her words. She must have been so worried when she'd found out he'd gone. Matt had been thinking of Shiro, of keeping him safe. He hadn't thought about how Pidge would feel when she learned that he was on his way to a Galra base without her. They were in a war so they'd accepted that they would be going into combat, both together and separately, but that didn't mean Pidge would be happy about it and it didn't mean he should do it without at least saying goodbye first. 

"I'm sorry," Matt said. 

"You should be. I lost you once, I'm not losing you again." 

Matt nodded his agreement and left, Pidge's words echoing in his mind. He headed towards the infirmary and still feeling awkward and guilty, both about leaving Pidge and about how he felt about the Shiros. He wasn't being fair to the real Shiro. What had happened to him wasn't his fault, any more than it was the clone Shiro's fault. Neither of them had asked for this and both of them would have to live with the consequences. 

Matt reached the infirmary and found, as he expected, that Shiro had activated one of the healing pods. He was frozen inside, eyes shut, while the Altean technology worked its miracles on him. It would probably only be a short stay, since his wound hadn't been too serious, so Matt sat down near the healing pod to wait.


	9. Chapter 9

The first thing Shiro saw when the pod opened was Matt, sitting on the floor where he'd have a good view of the opening pod. At least, he'd have a good view if his eyes were open. He'd fallen asleep, head slumped against the side of a control console. A part of Shiro wondered about leaving him asleep, letting the ignorance sit for a little longer, but he knew that waiting wouldn't help anyone. He went over and gently nudged Matt awake. 

Matt made a vague noise, opened his eyes, and then nearly fell sideways as he came awake. 

"Oh. Hey, you're up." 

He rubbed at his eyes and Shiro offered him a hand to get to his feet. 

"Ow," Matt complained, "pins and needles. You really need to get some chairs in this infirmary." 

"We try not to need it too often." 

From Matt's relaxed tone, Shiro guessed that they didn't think he was public enemy number one, but he had to ask, "What's the verdict?" 

"The lion accepted the other Shiro right away," Matt said. 

Shiro nodded. He knew the implications of that, what it meant about him. He'd been afraid of this and he'd thought he'd been prepared to hear it, but he would have rather been punched in the groin. He wasn't who he thought he was. His memories were a lie. Everything he believed about himself was wrong. 

"Pidge and I are going to go through the data I got from the base," Matt went on. "We're going to figure out what they did to you. If there's a specific trigger then we can work out a protection against it, but in the meantime, the team's come up with a few rules as a precaution." 

Matt sounded tentative as he spoke, watching Shiro carefully for his reaction. He didn't look like he was bracing himself for an attack, which was something. Shiro had expected things to change once the truth was known. He told himself he was ready for this and asked, "What rules?" 

"You can't wander the castle on your own," Matt said. "If you want to somewhere, you have to ask someone to go with you." 

That was better than Shiro had feared. They weren't locking him up completely. 

"You can still go to most places," Matt went on, "the training room, the lounge, all the normal places, but not the control room, the engine room, or the armoury." 

Those were all reasonable precautions. Logically, Shiro understood the reasoning behind all of them. If there was some trigger that would make brainwashing kick in, he couldn't afford to be in a place where he could do too much damage. It didn't make it easier to hear though that he was banned from places he'd been able to walk in and out of at will only a couple of days ago. 

"What else?" Shiro asked. 

"You're going to be excluded from strategy discussions and Pidge is going to limit your access to the computer systems from your room." 

Again a precaution that made sense. The Altean computer system connected all parts of the castle. Shiro didn't have the technical skills to hack into the controls for major systems from the computer in his bedroom, but if he was taken over by the Galra there was no telling what might be possible. The restrictions probably wouldn't change his own usage of that computer, which was mainly to access a library of Altean books so he could read before going to bed. Pidge had set up an automatic translator that worked enough that he could read books of Altean tactics and military history. Not that those books would be much use to him now. He didn't need to study military strategy if he was being excluded from all of the planning meetings. 

A thought occurred. 

"Am I going to keep my room?" he asked. "Or does the Real Shiro want it back?" 

"That's a very good question." 

"I'll use one of the other rooms," Shiro said. All the rooms the paladins used were the same, with the exception that half of them were a mirrored layout of the other half. They all had the same amount of space, the same bunk, the same small wash unit in the corner, the same computer console and storage units. If Shiro moved two doors down the hallway he wouldn't even be able to tell the difference. But he'd know. It would be just another difference that marked him apart from the other Shiro, the Real Shiro. He would have to go for a mirror-layout room as a reminder of who he really was. 

"Are there any other rules?" Shiro asked. 

"That's it," Matt answered. 

Given that Shiro had been afraid that they'd start keeping him at gunpoint or lock him away in a cell in the castle, he supposed this was not so bad. They would still treat him kindly and they weren't going to stop him from using the castle's facilities and it was only until Pidge and Matt decoded the stolen data. He could live with this. 

***

A few hours later, Shiro wasn't sure he could live with this. He lay on the bunk in his new quarters, unable to sleep. Nightmares came often enough but now they had a new aspect to them. He dreamt of his friends attacking him, calling him an enemy. He dreamt of seeing his own face, his own body, attacking him. He dreamt of hurting them. Each time he managed to drift to sleep, he woke what felt like seconds later, a new fear snatching rest from him. 

Normally when the dreams got bad he would go to the training room and work out until exhaustion took over and his body was forced to submit to sleep. He couldn't do that tonight, couldn't just walk down there and activate one of the practice robots. He tried working out in the room instead, doing press ups and sit ups, squats and lunges, getting his heart beating faster and trying to bring about the necessary level of tiredness to make his brain quiet down. It didn't seem to be working. 

After perhaps half an hour, he turned on the room's computer and activated the communications system. He set it to deliver a low priority message, which wouldn't disturb anyone who was sleeping or trying to. 

"Is anyone else awake?" he asked. "I want to go to the training room for a bit." 

He waited, not really expecting an answer, but after a minute his door opened. Real Shiro stood outside. 

"Can't sleep?" he asked. 

"Nightmares," Shiro answered. 

Real Shiro nodded. "I know the feeling. I could probably do with a workout, but you'll have to go easy on me. You're in a lot better shape than I am." 

His tone was light, with none of the accusation it had held earlier. There was an edge behind the tone, but one that he was clearly trying to hide. Shiro wondered if this was an attempt at a peace offering. 

"Maybe we should stick to drills rather than sparring," Shiro said. 

Real Shiro nodded. He stepped back, clearing the doorway so that Shiro could leave and together they walked towards the training room. 

"That probably makes sense," Real Shiro said, "especially since I could barely land a punch when I was trying to kill you and you were holding back." 

"It wasn't as bad as you're making it sound. You held your own." 

"But you went into that fight already injured and I couldn't stop you. I have a lot of work to do before I'm ready for a real battle." 

Shiro didn't know what to say to that. He wanted to offer his own services, say that he could do missions if Real Shiro needed it, but he doubted that offer would be accepted, at least not until Pidge and Matt decoded the Galra data. Shiro was lucky he was allowed to train and didn't have a clamp locked around his arm to prevent him from powering it up. 

When they emerged from the elevator on the right level for the training room, Shiro set off at a steady jog. Real Shiro fell into step beside him, but Shiro couldn't help notice that what was a gentle warm up for him was causing Real Shiro to breathe hard. He slowed his pace a little. Real Shiro didn't say anything but he must have noticed, judging by the irritated look he sent his way. 

In the training room, they ignored the practice weapons and the robots in favour of running through exercises of blows and blocks. They were designed to get the muscles honed for the movements of combat and to build up the instinctive reactions. They went slowly for a while, taking turns being on the offensive and defensive. It didn't take long for Real Shiro to be struggling, sweating hard and fighting for breath. Shiro let it go on for a while before he said, "Do you want a break?" 

Real Shiro looked like he might argue, but he relented and went to get some water, annoyance showing clearly on his face. Shiro still had energy to spare and since this was all about wearing himself out enough to sleep, he wanted to do more. He ran laps of the room for a few minutes, pushing the pace until sweat was soaking his shirt as well. He trusted that Real Shiro would know why he was doing this, know that he wasn't trying to show off. If anyone would understand his motivation, it would be him. 

They drilled together for another half hour and then Shiro ran a few more laps before they headed back to their rooms together. He felt tired enough now that he thought he might be able to sleep for a few hours. 

"Thanks for this," he said, as the elevator moved through the castle. 

"I should be thanking you," Real Shiro said. "If it weren't for you, I'd still be back there. I'm sorry I reacted as badly as I did." 

He sounded like the apology was being dragged out of him, but Shiro appreciated the attempt nonetheless. Shiro could hardly hold his anger or his reaction against him because he doubted he would have been any better. In fact, the evidence suggested that he would have reacted in exactly the same way if their positions were reversed. 

"I'm not trying to steal your life," he said. "You know that, right?" 

"Yeah," said Real Shiro after only a moment’s hesitation. "I know."


	10. Chapter 10

Matt went to Shiro's room to see if he wanted breakfast only to find that he had already gone. Down in the dining room, he found Shiro, one of them anyway, sitting with Keith. They were discussing Keith's impending return to the Blade of Marmora. Matt wondered if it would be rude to ask which Shiro this was. He thought it was the clone Shiro, because he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, but that was hardly conclusive. They needed to come up with some way to visually differentiate them. 

Then the other Shiro walked in and Matt knew that they didn't need anything after all, because the man who'd walked in was considerably less broad than the one sitting at the table, cheeks hollow, limbs thinner. The Real Shiro had cut his hair short again but even having that detail match just made it stand out even more how different the two of them were. It would be a few weeks at least before they had to worry about mistaking them. 

"Pidge and I are going to spend the day going through the data," Matt said, grabbing a bowl of food goo and digging in. "Do you want to join us?" 

He addressed the clone Shiro, but flicked his eyes towards Real Shiro as an invitation as well, in case he wanted to be there. Real Shiro was the first to answer, responding with a shake of his head. 

"I'm going to spend today catching up on what I've missed over the past few weeks." 

Clone Shiro considered the question a little longer and said, "I might bring something to read while you work, but I'll join you." 

Given that his alternative was probably to sit in his room and read, it was hardly a surprising decision. Besides, he would probably want to be on hand as soon as they learned anything relevant. It had to be hard for him, not to be able to trust what was going on inside his own head. Keith bid his farewells, since he needed to get back to the Blade as soon as possible, having dropped his duties to come back here. He'd admitted now that it wasn't just a visit because he'd had time on his hands, and that meant he needed to hurry away now that he was no longer needed to pilot the black lion. The rest of them finished up their breakfasts and then Matt took the clone Shiro down to the lab where they'd set up. 

Shiro found a seat in the corner and pulled up a book on his wrist device while Matt connected to the main computer, bringing up the stolen data and every decryption tool he and Pidge had between them. He started by running the data through some of the standard Galra decryption protocols, using a few lines of code to try every password he'd acquired during his time with the Galra. After a few minutes, he had about five percent of the files decrypted, but they were all the least classified stuff. He had access to storage logs for food supplies and repair logs for minor errors. There was a collection of Galra personal messages from the crew of the base to friends and family, something which made Matt pause, if only because he didn't think about Galra soldiers writing home. 

He pushed those to one side and ploughed on into the rest of the data. He made copies of what he had left so he could try out multiple decryption programs at once. On the first copy, he started his standard decryption protocols running again but with autogenerated passwords. It was a brute force effort that would every possible combination of characters in sequence just in case it turned out to be a valid password. Matt was glad that Altean computers were faster than ones because on Earth, because it would take even a top range Earth computer a few hundred years to run through all the possibilities. Even here, it would take hours, so Matt left that bit of software running and moved on to more sophisticated methods on the next copy. 

He lost himself in lines of code, trying to think like a Galra programmer and imagine ways that the data might have been encrypted so that he could work backwards. He wrote his own decryption programs and set them to work, setting the computer to alert him if they started to decode something that looked like real Galra script and then moving on to the next attempt. A dull throb was starting to set in behind his eyes when Pidge finally joined them in the lab, towing a large object behind her on a floating dolly. 

"Where've you been?" Matt asked. "I thought you were going to be working on decryption with me?" 

"I found a biological sample scanner that I've been able to repurpose," Pidge answered. "It was presumably intended for scientific studies because it performs a detailed analysis of an organic subject, down to the atomic level. I just did a scan of the other Shiro. Now I want to do a comparison scan." 

Shiro turned off his book and moved over to where Pidge was setting up the object she'd brought with her. Its heart was a large box but a number of spindly arms unfolded out of it, forming something that almost looked like a cage. At Pidge's instructions, Shiro stepped into the space between the arms and Pidge started moving them to surround him. In minutes, he was standing in the middle of a cylinder of metal poles. The arms were different lengths, each ending with some sort of sensor which Pidge aimed at Shiro, who looked thoroughly uncomfortable about this whole procedure. 

"This won't hurt a bit," Pidge announced and activated the machine. "Try to hold still." 

Lights shone from the ends of the various arms, scanning up and down Shiro's body like little spotlights trying to illuminate each part of him in turn. The arms moved and shifted, never colliding but gaining better angles and shining their lights again. Then the arms folded themselves back into the box and Pidge extracted a data crystal. 

"Perfect." 

"This will tell you what the Galra did to me?" Shiro asked. 

"Well, it will tell us any differences between you and the other Shiro. We can work from there." 

Matt turned his attention back to his work while Pidge started her comparison. One of his programs was flashing an alert message. It wasn't complete decryption, but a few words had emerged. Given that the data had been encrypted at the binary level, then the fact that any of it came out resembling Galra words was interesting. It meant his decryption algorithm was working on some of the data but not all. He brought that program up and started working on it. 

At first he thought that perhaps the Galra used different encryption protocols for different data, in the same way that the store logs were protected in a less sophisticated manner, but the fragments that had been decrypted were scattered through the files. Presumably then, that meant that the encryption protocol changed as it worked and so Matt would have to find a way to adapt his decryption program in the same way. He copied the data again and made some more attempts, some changing the encryption variables based on the duration of the program, some based on the previously encrypted values, some based on wavelength equations. He waited to see which, if any, started giving him more Galra text. While he waited, he turned his attention back to the others. 

Beside him, Pidge was staring at lists of differences between two sets of scan data, with Shiro peering over her shoulder. 

"Most of the differences are superficial," Pidge said, "and explained by the different situations you've been in. Different levels of muscle mass, he's mildly vitamin D deficient, different gut flora." 

"Gut flora?" Shiro asked. 

"The microbial ecosystem in your digestive track. It can change based on the food that you eat, so differences are expected when you've been eating different food for several weeks." She continued down her list. "Physically, your differences are just things that can be explained by diet and exercise changes." 

"But mentally?" Shiro asked. 

"That's trickier to tell. Your brains are basically the same. Most of the neuron connections are identical. There are some minor variations in the chemical balance, but hormones can change with mood, some of that could be because you feel different right now." 

"So there are differences between us," Shiro said, "but you can't tell what's normal and what might be the result of Galra brainwashing." 

"Sorry. I'm not a neuroscientist and it's not like the Altean library has much information on human physiognomy. The only thing I can say for sure is that they haven't planted anything physical in you. No tracking devices or anything like that. Even your cybernetic arms are identical." 

"I guess it's good to know I don't have a time bomb planted in me," Shiro said, but he didn't sound exactly thrilled. Being told that they didn't have the expertise to help him couldn't have been reassuring. Shiro looked at Matt, "Are you having any more progress." 

"Not much," he said. "I've got some irrelevant files decrypted but they must have wanted to keep the experiment data heavily secured." 

As he spoke, his new algorithms finished. Some had failed completely, but the ones he'd set up to run based on time values had small patches of decrypted text, just a few scattered words, sometimes only partial words. But each program had managed to decrypt different chunks. He could merge the segments he had and he would probably end up with half the files, but it still wasn't quite enough. Maybe this would be the key though, if he could work out the relationship between the decrypted sections and the variables he'd used, he might be able to find a formula that would work across the whole data set. 

"Pidge," he said, "I need help finding a pattern." He stood up, letting her take his seat, explaining briefly the algorithms he'd used and showing her the results. She frowned at the screen, chewing her lip slightly as she read over his results. 

"The Galra use a universal timing system on all of their bases and ships," she said. "It keeps them all in sync despite any time dilation effects from gravity masses or high velocities. I think the encryption algorithm made use of that to create a constantly shifting encryption key, but the fact that you have these repeated patches of decryption means that there must be a cycle to the key. That makes sense. It can't just take the time value otherwise the only way to ever decrypt something would be if you knew the precise millisecond it was encrypted at. We just have to work out the value cycle it uses to construct the key." 

She was typing as she talked and Matt watched her fingers flying over the keys. Matt wanted to blame their difference in speed on his unfamiliarity with the Altean keyboard and writing system that she was using to input her commands, but he suspected the real reason was that his little sister's genius outshone his. It was a truth hard to escape. 

"Got it," she said with a grin, as her version of Matt's decryption program started pouring out files of Galra text that her translation program could convert into perfectly understandable English. She must have caught something of what he was feeling on his face because she said, "You laid the foundations." 

He appreciated the sentiment, but he knew he would have spent another hour at least trying to finish the program off and she'd made it work in five minutes. 

"Let's divide up the files and start going through them," Matt said. 

"Can I help?" Shiro offered. 

"That might not be the best idea. What if one of the files includes someone explaining exactly how to trigger whatever they did to you?" 

"You could go through the discard files," Pidge suggested. "There are a whole bunch of files which are probably not relevant, but it couldn't hurt for someone to skim through them, just in case someone mentions something useful." 

Shiro nodded, and Matt transferred the Galra personal letters over to Shiro's wrist device so that he could read through them. Matt said back down at the computer console and brought up his own files to go through. It seemed that the Galra scientists on that base had kept meticulous logs of their experiments and other work. The answer to the question of what had been done to the clone of Shiro was buried somewhere in all this data. Time to dig it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't related to the fic, but over on my blog, I've been putting together a list of sci-fi and fantasy books with significant LGBTQ+ representation. I've just launched a new version of the list that lets you filter down by specific types of representation. This is a work in progress, so I'm keen to get a few people trying it out and giving feedback. I'm also keen on growing the list, so if you're interested in contributing new books to the list, let me know. You can find the list here: <http://www.plot-twister.co.uk/queer-reading-list-search>


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only a short chapter today, but the cliffhanger was too evil for me to resist.

Galra letters were incredibly repetitive, Shiro found. Most were letters from soldiers to family members, and every single one seemed to talk about how proud they were to serve, and how they were glad to be of use to the empire. They spoke of how glorious it was to play even a small role in the great empire and how they hoped their family would follow their example. Shiro wondered how much of this sentiment was genuine and how much was because the writers' superior officers would be reading the letters before transmitting them. He guessed the latter had a lot to do with it because there wasn't so much as a whisper of a grumble in any of the letters he skimmed through. 

There were some letters that broke up the monotony, where soldiers wrote to friends on other postings and talked about past glories. There were some letters that included hints about how a transfer would be welcomed, including some thoroughly sycophantic comments about how it would such a great honour to work with whoever it was the writer was addressing. 

There was absolutely nothing about the work being done on the station. Presumably the Galra had confidentiality rules that prevented soldiers mentioning any specifics of their work when they wrote to people on other postings. Shiro had read at least a hundred letters and was ready to give up on them. 

He looked over at the others. "Please tell me you're having more luck than I am." 

"I've found the experiment reports for the cloning attempts," Pidge said. "There are a lot of them." 

"A lot of reports?" Shiro asked. 

"A lot of cloning attempts." 

"Do you mean that there could be more copies of me, I mean, copies of him, still in Galra clutches?" 

"I don't think so. All of these reports are labelled unviable. There are closing summaries for each of them of what went wrong." She scrolled through a series of reports, reading aloud as she went. "Inability to process spoken language. Optic nerve failure. Short term memories not being stored. Lack of access to original memories. Lack of muscle control. Lack of, ouch, lack of control of the autonomic functions during sleep. This clone basically went to sleep and his heart and lungs and everything shut off. Each of these copies they made just... didn't work right. They copied the body perfectly but there was a problem with getting the brain to work properly." 

"I guess I should be grateful I'm not a drooling vegetable then," Shiro said. He peered over Pidge's shoulder, reading some of the summaries. They made his stomach churn as he thought of all those versions of him created and abandoned. 

"I think I've found the answer," Matt said. "I've got some progress reports sent to Galra central command. The scientist leading the project said that they had to change their strategy. The previous experiments, all the ones that went wrong, they were trying to create a copy of Shiro that had a new personality, loyal to the Galra, but access to all of the original Shiro's memories. When they tried to imprint the mind with the new personality while leaving the memories intact, the experiment failed every time. This says that they're trying a new approach. Their plan was to create an identical copy, leaving the original memories and personality intact, and then to try and induce control through drugs and mental conditioning after creation of a viable copy. According to this, they think the conditioning would take longer but be ultimately more effective than trying to merge in a new personality at the time of creation." 

"What's the time stamp on that report?" Pidge asked. 

"Let me check. Why?" 

"I want to check how it compares to Shiro's escape." She turned to Shiro. "You escaped basically as soon as you woke up, right?" 

"Yeah." 

"If the plan was to start from an identical copy and then do conditioning, but then you escaped right away, maybe they never had the chance to do any conditioning." 

"Meaning that there's no Galra brainwashing," Shiro said. The thought was a comforting one. He hoped Pidge's guess was right. 

She studied the numbers on her screen. "Factoring in how long it took between your escape and Keith locating you, there's about a three day gap between the progress report and when you must have escaped." 

"Oh," Shiro said, disappointed. He'd dared to hope for a moment that maybe that Galra hadn't been able to do anything to his mind after all, but three days was a long time. Pidge must have seen something of his thoughts in his expression because she quickly went on. 

"No, this is a good thing. That progress report says that they planned on changing their methods. They hadn't done it yet. And it must take time to create a fully functional biological copy, and install the cybernetic arm. Given the comment about conditioning taking longer, I think it's safe to say that even if they did start doing something to you, it wouldn't have had time to take." 

Matt turned and offered Shiro a grin. "That's good. That means we don't have to worry." 

"Don't have to worry about what?" said a new voice. Hunk walked into the lab, holding a large tray bearing some new culinary creation. The sight of it reminded Shiro how long it had been since breakfast. 

It was Pidge who explained, while Shiro grabbed a plate of curling vegetables in an orange sauce from the tray Hunk offered around. 

"The Galra reports say that they're brainwashing techniques take time, but Shiro here was only their prisoner for a couple of days after they made him so they wouldn't have had time to do anything to him." 

"How much time do their techniques need?" Hunk asked. 

"I'm not sure. We've still got a lot of data to work through, but longer than a day or two, that's for sure." 

"Like, several weeks?" Hunk said. "Like, the amount of time the other Shiro was their prisoner for?" 

Shiro felt cold. His stomach churned and threatened to throw up the few mouthfuls of food he'd just eaten. He exchanged a worried look with the others. They'd all been worried about him, knowing now that he wasn't the original Shiro, but what if they'd worried about the wrong person? The report Matt had found talked about doing conditioning over a period of time on someone with the thoughts and memories of the original Shiro. If they really had created him as an identical copy, then would it really matter to them whether they were doing the conditioning on the original or the copy? In fact, this way was probably better, because everyone was so focused on the threat he potentially posed as a Galra copy that no one was paying any attention to the Real Shiro. 

"Do you know where he is?" Shiro asked. 

"I haven't seen him this morning," Hunk answered. 

Pidge was already typing away at the computer, looking up something in the castle's systems. 

"Oh no," she said. She brought up a security camera image on the screen, a large empty space with nothing in it. It took Shiro a moment for the implications to hit him. That was the hanger for the black lion. The Real Shiro had stolen the black lion.


	12. Chapter 12

"Wait," said Lance, "you're saying that the real Shiro is the bad Shiro?" 

"Yes!" said Matt and Pidge together. They were all in the castle's control room, the rules about Shiro not being allowed in there abandoned in light of their new discovery. It had taken only a few minutes for Matt and Pidge to confirm their fears from the stolen data and for Shiro to ascertain that the Real Shiro was no longer there. 

"The Galra realised that they couldn't make an evil clone," Pidge said. "They tried to make a copy of Shiro that had all his memories and looked like him but who was working for them, but all their experiments failed. So they decided to make an identical copy but then make one of them work for them using drugs and, I don't know, hypnotism or something." 

"They let the copy escape," Matt continued as Pidge ran out of breath, "to give themselves time because they knew you guys wouldn't keep looking for Shiro if you thought you'd already found him. And they did the brainwashing on the real Shiro because..." 

Shiro finished for him, "Because you were more likely to trust the real me than the copy." 

They'd fallen right into the trap. Even Shiro had fallen for it, doubting himself once he'd learned that he wasn't the original, even though every thought in his head, every memory, told him that he really was Shiro. He'd let himself be fooled and even the black lion had fallen for it. The black lion had accepted its original paladin, and now Voltron might be lost forever. 

"I can track the black lion," Allura said. She was already moving to her position in the centre of the control room, pillars rising up beside her for her to operate the castle's systems. "I will use the teludav to create a wormhole to the black lion's position. We can get it back before the other Shiro has a chance to deliver it to the Galra." 

"But what if he uses the black lion against us?" Hunk said. That was a very real possibility. Real Shiro would turn the black lion on the other Voltron lions and against the castle itself. Catching up to the lion wasn't the same as catching it. They only had one chance at getting the lion back. 

"I have to try and reform my connection to the black lion," Shiro said. 

"The lion's already rejected you once," Matt said. 

"I know that, but if nothing else, I can try to fight for control. If the Real Shiro is busy fighting me for the lion, he won't be able to fight the rest of you." 

The rest of them discussed strategy, talking about how to immobilise the black lion, making plans on freezing it with blue's ice beam and tying it with green's vines. Shiro walked out of the control room and back towards the lion's hanger, the place where he could most strongly feel the connection. He and Zarkon had fought for control of the black lion once, he could fight for it again. It was different this time because now he wasn't the one in the pilot seat. It was also different because he was literally fighting against himself. Whatever the Galra might have done to him, the other Shiro was the real one, was the original, and Shiro had to believe that there was still a piece of the original person there, buried under the surface. 

The Real Shiro wasn't completely taken over by the Galra, and he knew that because of last night. When Shiro had been unable to sleep and wanted to work out, Real Shiro had been there, had given him what he needed. There was no ulterior motive to that workout. There had been nothing for him to gain by helping him. The only reason Real Shiro had for helping him out had been because he'd asked. That meant there was still compassion there, under the surface, buried under whatever layers of Galra brainwashing had been put in place. 

Real Shiro was worth saving. 

This wasn't just about taking back the black lion. This was about taking back himself. 

Shiro reached the hanger, echoing and empty. It felt wrong to be here without the lion. He clung to that sense of wrongness, using it as the first link in the chain of connection that would lead his mind back to the lion. He sat down on the decking, closed his eyes, and reached inside of himself for the quiet voice that heard the lion's thoughts. 

"Black," he whispered. "Can you hear me?" 

This was more difficult when he wasn't inside the lion, but he reached for that thread of connection that bound them together, filled his mind with the memories of flying inside the black lion, the way it had felt. When they had moved together, when he had seen through black's eyes, when their minds had melded together until their thoughts merged and he wasn't sure where he ended and the lion began. He fought for that feeling again. 

He felt the lion out there, somewhere beyond the walls of the castle, moving away from him. He reached out with his mind. He touched. 

"Please," he said, "let me in." 

In his mind, he could see them, the black lion and its paladin. His eyes were still closed, but he saw a great plane beneath a star-filled sky and there, glowing faintly in this place of thought, he saw the lion and the other Shiro standing beside it. Their eyes met. 

"You can't take him from me," Real Shiro said. "I am its true paladin." 

"You were," Shiro said. He walked forward, but the distance between them seemed to shift and warp so that he never came any closer. 

"You stole my life and now you're trying to steal my lion." 

"You're the one trying to give the lion to the Galra. I can't let you do that." 

"You can't take him." 

Real Shiro lunged at him. In this place, without physical form, there was no weakness of body to hold him back. This time, it was the strength of will that would determine the match. 

***

"Where do you need me?" Matt asked, as the paladins ran for their lions and Allura powered up the teludav to take them through a short wormhole trip to catch up with the black lion. 

"Auxiliary weapons console," Coran told him. 

Matt took his place and placed his hands on the console, letting the display light up. Pidge's translation program automatically kicked in, labelling everything in English next to all the controls and readouts. They didn't know what would be facing them on the other side, so Matt made sure all the lasers were charged and ready to go as Allura opened the portal. The ship soared forward, blasting into the wormhole and then Allura was already moving, taking the zipline down to the blue lion to join the others even before the ship emerged from the portal at the other end of the short wormhole. 

The black lion hung in space before them, motionless and dark. 

The other lions launched and Matt heard the chatter of their comms. 

"What's wrong with it?" Hunk asked. "Is it dead?" 

"It must be Shiro," Matt said. "They must be fighting for control." 

"This is our chance," Allura said. "We can bring it back inside the castle while neither of them have control." 

They moved into their plan, with Pidge creating vines to bind the black lion's limbs and the others moving in to grasp it with their claws, towing the lion back into the hanger. 

"Is anyone else worried that this is too easy?" Hunk asked. "Like, we were all prepared for a big battle and now the lion's just all quiet." 

"Quit complaining, Hunk," said Lance. "If it's that easy, that's a good thing." 

"This is a battle that isn't to be fought with lasers and weapons," Allura said. "This is a battle to be fought inside the minds of the two Shiros." 

"But what do we do if the wrong one wins?" Pidge asked. 

"We will deal with that when the time comes. For now, we wait. This is not a battle we can help in." 

Matt's screens lit up with warnings and alerts. 

"We might not be able to help Shiro in his battle," he said, "but we might have another one of our own." 

"Galra ships," Coran said. "They're coming in right on top of us." 

Battleships appeared in the sky around the castle, no doubt summoned to escort the black lion back to wherever it was the other Shiro had been taking it. The ships disgorged fighters into the sky and Matt didn't wait for orders. He started blasting at wave after wave of fighters while the lions moved to try and shield the helpless black lion from the incoming assault. 

Whatever Shiro was doing, he needed to work fast.


	13. Chapter 13

"You don't want to do this," Shiro said. "You know who you really are." 

Real Shiro leapt at him, punching and kicking, fighting back with all the force his mind could muster, while Shiro still hoped that there was another way. He didn't want to be doing this to someone who was effectively himself. 

"Please," Shiro said, talking to Real Shiro almost as he had to the black lion. "Please, don't make me do this." 

Real Shiro landed a series of blows, faster than Shiro could block, as fast as thought. It made Shiro think of that night in the training room, of working together through sequences of exercises. 

At the thought, the darkness and star field all around them faded, and the two of them were standing in the training room on the castle of lions. Real Shiro barely seemed to notice the change in scenery, but Shiro did. This whole landscape was being sculpted by their thoughts. Maybe he could jog something loose in Real Shiro's mind by bringing up memories. 

"I know the Galra haven't destroyed you completely," Shiro said, "because of this training room. You brought me here because I asked. You showed me kindness." 

"I just wanted to see how you fought," Real Shiro said. "I wouldn't to take your measure." 

The fact that he was saying anything at all, Shiro took as a victory. If he could persuade this man to engage with him, he stood a chance of breaking through. It also helped that what he was saying made no sense at all. 

"That's not true," Shiro said. "We didn't fight. We didn't even spar. You didn't learn anything you didn't already know." 

"I needed exercise myself. You made a good excuse." 

"You didn't need an excuse. You never needed an excuse all the other times you went to the training room at night. You could have gone on your own and worked out with the robots, like you've done a few hundred times before. You didn't need me, but you took me, because I asked." 

The blows had stopped. The violence between them faded until they just stood, facing each other in their mutual mindscape. 

"I was curious," Real Shiro admitted. "I was curious about you." 

The words seemed to echo, filling the space in another voice. "I was curious." 

Shiro turned towards the source of the noise and saw himself, sitting on the roof of the Galaxy Garrison dorm rooms, a young man only just graduated from his cadet class sitting beside him. A mostly-full bottle of contraband whiskey sat between them. It was an image out of memory, playing out in front of them now. 

"I was curious," Matt said, answering the question as to why he'd signed up with the Galaxy Garrison. "The universe is such a big place and we've hardly seen the tiniest corner of it. There could be anything our there. Anomalies we don't have names for, other worlds, alien lifeforms." 

"What if the aliens aren't friendly?" the memory of Shiro asked. 

"That's why you're coming on this mission. You'll protect us from the big, mean aliens." 

There was laughter, tinged with tipsiness in one not used to drinking. 

They'd been celebrating the announcement that they would be going on the Kerberos mission together. They'd barely known each other before that night and it had seemed like a good idea to spend more time talking, learning about each other, before they were locked in a tin can together for weeks. Shiro had offered Matt a drink and they'd sat up on the roof together, speculating about the mission and what it might lead to. 

Shiro wasn't sure why this memory had appeared now. He hadn't been thinking about this. Had the Real Shiro? 

"You told Matt you'd protect him from the aliens," Shiro said now. "You remember this. You don't want to give the black lion over to the Galra. If the Empire takes the lion, Matt will get hurt." 

"It will end the war," Real Shiro said. "It will stop the violence. Everyone will be safer." 

"You know that's not true. That's Galra brainwashing talking. You know that there will just be more suffering if the Galra aren't stopped. You can't give them the black lion." 

"I'm not giving him to anyone. That black lion is mine." The anger was back in his eyes. "You're just trying to trick me. You're trying to steal him from me." 

And then he was back to fighting, lashing out with fury as the Garrison rooftops faded about them. 

"I surrendered him to you," Shiro said. "I let you take him back." 

"You're lying. All you know how to do is lie. You've been lying since the moment you were created. Lying with every breath while you pretended to be me." 

"I am you!" Shiro yelled. He shoved with all his will and Real Shiro went flying backwards, landing on the blank surface that surrounded them once again. 

"You might be the original," Shiro went on, "but right now, I'm more like you than you are. You're selling the paladins out! You have to know that's wrong. That's not how you'd behave if you were in your right mind." 

"You don't get to say anything about my mind!" Real Shiro yelled. He leapt and the two crashed together, but Shiro was less focused on the fight and more on memories, wanting to bring up something else that might bring Real Shiro back to himself. It was hard to think under the barrage of mental pain, but he pulled up a memory of Keith, of sitting together in the lounge in the castle of lions. Almost as soon as the thought occurred, he could see it, see himself and Keith sitting close together in the otherwise empty room. Real Shiro faltered in his attack as the memory of Shiro started to speak. 

"Do you regret not staying with the Blade of Marmora?" 

"No," Keith said. "No, I figured something out when I was going through their mindgame test. As much as I want to know where I come from, it's more important what we're doing here and now. The battle against the Empire, that's the important thing." 

Memory Shiro gave him a smile. "I'm proud of you, Keith." 

"It's no big deal." 

"Of course it is. You decided to put protecting people as your first priority, above anything you wanted for yourself. That's a very selfless choice, Keith." 

"It's not like I'm putting it off forever. When we defeat Zarkon, I can go back with Kolivan and maybe I can figure out how my mom ended up with a Galra blade." 

Shiro hadn't said then what they must both have been thinking: assuming they survived that long. The thought had hung in the air between them, unacknowledged but undoubtedly there, even as Shiro had reached out and placed a hand on Keith's shoulder. The memory of Shiro did the same now. 

"This war is important," the memory said. "You made the right choice, but it's OK to be upset about having to choose." 

The memory faded, the rest of the conversation slipping back into silence as the room faded to darkness around them. 

Shiro fixed Real Shiro with a determined stare. "You knew when you talked to Keith that fighting the Galra Empire was the most important thing. Protecting the innocent, protecting your friends, that's what matters." 

"My friends," Real Shiro sneered. "My friends who left me in that prison, who were probably glad I was gone. They never really cared about me." 

The memory that surged up around them came from him, another conversation but one less friendly. Pidge was mid-rant as the sound of her words filled the space. 

"You don't even care," she was yelling. "You don't care that my family are still out there."

"Of course I care," Shiro's memory said. 

"If you cared you would have let me get that information." 

"It was too big of a risk. You could have been killed." 

"We take risks every day, but only the risks that matter to you." 

"We take risks that are worth it." 

"So saving my dad and brother aren't worth it?" 

"Kaite..." 

"No! You don't get to call me that." 

"Calm down." 

"Don't tell me to calm down!" she screamed at him. "Don't tell me what to do. You're not my dad!" 

Shiro almost wanted to laugh at the words, at the anger in Pidge's tone, driven by her fears. He'd pulled her out of a mission when she'd been yet again trying to find word of her family. The Galra had taken moments like this, petty disagreements and minor arguments, and used them to twist Real Shiro's perceptions, making him turn against the other paladins. They must have been truly desperate for material to warp if they'd had to use memories like these. 

"Don't you remember how this argument ended?" Shiro asked. 

"It doesn't matter," Real Shiro said. "She hated me." 

"She never hated you. Even when she was angry," Shiro insisted. He forced his version of the memory to take over, an image of himself and Pidge. Her arms were wrapped around him as she sobbed into his chest, anger given way to pain. The memory of Shiro rubbed his human hand in soothing circles on her back as she cried, murmuring comfort about how they wouldn't give up, how they would all help her, how they would find her family. As they watched the memory, Real Shiro frowned at it, as though this was just some hazy recollection, some half-remembered thing that had been dredged from the mists in his mind. 

"I don't..." he said. He frowned again. 

"Pidge is your friend," Shiro said. "They're all your friends." 

"No!" Real Shiro turned away, the memory shattering instead of fading, bursting into shards of colour that hung in the air like new stars before they burned out. 

"They're your friends," Shiro insisted. 

Real Shiro hurled a memory at him, of Keith back before all of this had begun, when Shiro had been assigned as his mentor. Keith had yelled at Shiro, called him a dictator, told him he could go to hell. Shiro countered with a memory of waking up in the desert after Keith had rescued him from the crash site after he'd fled the Galra. Real Shiro lashed out with a memory of Keith and Lance arguing, of himself calling them children and storming away in frustration. There came a memory of a training session during which Hunk had manged a blow to a rather painful part of Shiro's anatomy. Shiro responded with the memory of Hunk apologising and the meal he'd cooked in an effort to make up for it. There was a memory of an argument with Allura, during which Shiro had snapped that he wasn’t her subject and that she couldn’t just order him around, but this was followed by a memory of a conversation with her during which they had sympathised with each other about missing their homes. 

The memories bounced back and forth, forming around them only to shift and fade moments later. It was becoming more fragmented with every moment, Real Shiro screaming and raging at him that the paladins weren't his friends, even as Shiro showed him memories that proved that a lie. The Galra had built up walls of anger and mistrust, putting barriers between Real Shiro and the others, but those barriers couldn't stand up to an assault from inside his own mind. Shiro attacked again and again, trying to make Real Shiro accept the truth. 

After what felt like hours of this, Shiro noticed a pattern, a person who was absent from all of the warped memories Real Shiro was trying to cling to. He didn't have any artificial hatred towards Matt. It had been Real Shiro who had summoned up that first memory, of the night on the Garrison roof. The Galra, in all their brainwashing, must have focused on turning Shiro against the other paladins, but they hadn't known that Matt would be on the castle too. They hadn't known there would be another person Real Shiro would put in danger with his actions, someone whose relationship they hadn't poisoned with their manipulations. 

"What about Matt?" Shiro asked. "Are you going to let him die?" 

Real Shiro froze. He didn't have an answer. 

"The Galra want you to do something that will hurt Matt," Shiro said, "after all you've done to protect him." 

Shiro let the memories pour out of him, of hurting him to save him from the arena, of smiles and jokes on the Garrison shuttle, of the hug as their reunited, of his ploy to come on the rescue mission. He knew that Real Shiro hadn't experienced all of these memories himself, but he saw them now, played out in front of him. Saw the friendship he was about to destroy. 

"If you give the black lion to the Galra," Shiro said, "the castle will fall. Matt will die. Do you want that?" 

Real Shiro stared at a memory echo of Matt. His anger had vanished, all the hate the Galra had filled him with was gone. He stared at the image of Matt and his resolve crumbled. There were tears on his cheeks and he shook his head. 

"I don't know what I'm doing," Real Shiro said, voice almost a whisper, but Shiro heard it. He crossed the mindscape and Real Shiro didn't pull back. Real Shiro let Shiro pull him into a hug. 

"It's OK," Shiro said. "We can get through this. We'll help you break free of whatever the Galra did. You can be yourself again." 

He expected more anger, more resistance, but Real Shiro nodded. He surrendered. 

The mindscape faded and Shiro was in the hanger bay again, as something exploded nearby.


	14. Chapter 14

Matt had his eyes focused on his console, on the readings of ships around them, while Coran yelled something about the particle barrier. They'd nearly lost their shielding over about a quarter of the castle, so Matt focused his attention in that direction, firing off lasers at any Galra fighters that came too close, trying not to hit the lions while he was at it. Blue and Red were engaging the enemy while Yellow and Green towed the black lion into its hanger. As the lions wove in and out of enemy ships at impressive speeds, it was difficult for Matt to make sure he would get a clean shot. He blasted anything he could, without much thought to strategy except keeping the Galra from overrunning the castle. 

There were so many ships out there, more than he could deal with. It felt like new waves of fighters was constantly launching, replacing the ones that were destroyed. 

"Target that ion cannon!" Coran yelled. 

"Which ion cannon?" Lance had time to ask, before the cannon in question sent a blast of energy in their direction. It hit the already weakened shields and the particle barrier shattered in that direction. Matt poured laser fire out through the newly opened hole, but the fighters were pouring in, opening their weapons up against the spires of the castle. 

Warnings and alerts flashed up all around the control room. Matt didn't know what most of them meant except trouble. 

"Another ion canon is preparing to fire!" Coran yelled. 

There was a blaze of light and a host of new warnings. The whole castle shuddered and Matt grabbed hold of the control panel to keep his footing. Alarms screamed. 

"The castle can't take another hit like that," Allura said over the comms. 

Matt shot at everything in the sky, listing to the chatter on the comms as the lions tried to take out the ion cannons before this situation went from bad to death. 

"We need to get out of here," Hunk said. 

The black lion was at the hanger entrance now. Yellow and Green pushed it inside, even as they were bombarded with laser fire from the Galra fighters. 

"I have enough energy stored to open a wormhole," Coran said. 

"Do it," said Allura. "We'll be right behind you." 

Now that there wasn't a danger of leaving the black lion stranded and able to be captured, Coran powered up the portal to take them somewhere far away from here. Matt kept firing. He poured out lasers and let everyone else worry about moving the castle and the lions. His systems showed the change instantly as the castle moved through the opening of the portal, but his console was still giving off warnings. A handful of Galra fighters had been close enough to come through the wormhole with them, especially those that had made it inside the particle barrier. 

They were still firing, even inside the wormhole, and Matt didn't want to think about what that might mean for the cosmic energy all around them. 

But as Coran transitioned them into normal space, it was only a small number of Galra fighters that had come with them and now Hunk and Pidge could focus on the fight too. Matt let out a breath of relief. 

***

Shiro had been startled by the opening of the hanger doors and then had the problem of the inert black lion being basically shoved inside. The black lion wasn't controlling its landing and Shiro had to run, dodging out of its path as it crashed down onto the hanger floor and skidded towards where he'd been sitting. Shiro slammed into a wall and nearly ended up pinned by the lion's leg as the lion slid to a halt barely inches in front of him. 

Shiro let out a breath that came out almost as a hysterical laugh as he realised how close he'd come to getting crushed. His relief at being alive was instantly replaced by worry. He hurried to the black lion's head. 

"Hey. Let me in." 

The lion's eyes were dark, but he could still feel the life in front of him. The black lion opened its jaws, even as it lay sideways on the deck, and Shiro scrambled in through the opening that made. 

He found the Real Shiro in the cockpit, lying on the side of the room, prone across one of the displays. Shiro thought at first he was unconscious, but the other man opened his eyes as Shiro approached. Those eyes were sparkling with tears. 

"It's OK," Shiro said, moving slowly in case this turned into another fight, but Real Shiro didn't seem even able to stand up. 

"I nearly got us all killed," Real Shiro said. 

"It's not your fault. The Galra got inside your head. They twisted things around. It's not your fault." 

Shiro reached out and with gentle hands helped Real Shiro into a more comfortable position, sitting on what should have been a wall of the cockpit. Real Shiro rubbed a hand across his face. 

"I don't know what to think," he said. "I don't know what's real." 

"We'll help you figure it out," Shiro promised. He pulled Real Shiro into a hug. 

They were still like that sometime later when Lance came to find them. 

*** 

The castle was in a bad state. Matt was busy helping Coran with the repairs, alongside Pidge and Allura, which was something of a shame because Shiro thought Matt would be the best person to help Real Shiro through this. Out of all of them, Matt was the only one whose relationship with Real Shiro hadn't been the subject of Galra manipulation. 

In the days that followed the near loss of the black lion, Real Shiro seemed to shift back and forth in his mental state. The team had confined him to quarters except for meals and daily exercise, for which he was escorted by at least two paladins. There had been some debate about whether he should be restrained when he was outside his room, but since the aim was to restore him to who he had been before, the decision had been made to show him this kindness. Shiro, on the other hand, was apparently trusted again. No one said anything about re-establishing the rules of caution that they'd set in place before. Shiro probably shouldn't have felt happy about that, but the price of that trust was so high it was hard to be happy about anything. All his thoughts were spent on Real Shiro and what he was going through. 

Shiro had reached him while their minds had been linked by the black lion, but it was harder to reach him with words in the waking world. In those periods Real Shiro spent with the rest of the team, he would often be angry, yelling about how they had abandoned him, how they'd never been his friends, how he wished the Galra had killed them. Then there were other times, when he seemed to know that those feelings weren't really his own, during which he was remorseful. He apologised to each of them several times for what had happened in the fight to keep the black lion. It was hard to know from one minute to the next what he mood would be. 

Shiro tried talking to him, reminding him of shared memories, of moments of friendship to try and rebuild the foundations of the team. But half the time, Real Shiro was more angry with him than with anyone else. Again, the accusations were back that Shiro was trying to steal his life, trying to steal the black lion. No matter how Shiro insisted that he was trying to give those things back, Real Shiro wouldn't believe him. 

The truth was, Shiro hadn't gone near the black lion since he'd pulled Real Shiro out of there. He'd been afraid to, not knowing how the black lion would react to him. It hurt that the black lion hadn't trusted him, when it had been Real Shiro who had proved to be the threat. Shiro hoped that after their minds had been linked it would mean that the black lion would accept him again, but becoming the black paladin would only damage the healing the Real Shiro was going through. It would prove some of his fears true, and Shiro didn't want to risk that. He didn't want to risk what little progress had been made. 

He couldn't put it off forever though. Allura cornered him one day, after a particularly frustrating hour spent in Real Shiro's quarters, trying to make him see that Keith wasn't an ungrateful brat who had never repaid all the kindness Shiro had shown him. Shiro was walking to the training room, wanting some exercise and the excuse to pummel something, when Allura stepped in front of him and blocked his path. 

"You need to go to the black lion," she said. "You need to see if it will accept you as paladin." 

"We should focus on helping Real Shiro recover," Shiro said, "so that he can be paladin again." 

"We have no way of knowing how long that could take. Right now, he is too unstable and we need a black paladin. We need someone leading the team who we can all trust." 

The meaning beneath those words was clear: not like the Real Shiro. He might be the original, but they couldn't trust him right now. They might not ever be able to trust him again in the same way. Even if Real Shiro got back into that cockpit and the black lion allowed him to fly, the rest of the team wouldn't be able to form Voltron, not with the shattered trust caused by the Galra brainwashing. 

"We need Voltron," Allura said. "We need you to be a paladin again." 

It felt like a betrayal of the Real Shiro, a betrayal of himself, but Allura was right. The Galra were still a threat that needed to be defeated and that meant that someone had to be the head of Voltron. Unless they called Keith back, the only person who could pilot the black lion was him. He didn't want to do it. He was also afraid that the black lion might not want him back. The black lion had let him in during the battle, let him use it as a conduit to talk to Real Shiro inside his mind, but that wasn't the same thing. 

There was only one way to know, only one thing Shiro could do. He might not like this, might not know how Real Shiro would react when he found out, but it had to be done. Shiro nodded his agreement and turned and walked towards the black lion's hanger. 

Shiro felt the lion's presence in his mind as soon as he walked into the hanger, felt the connection there, stronger than it had been before, at least for him. It felt like it had after he'd broken Zarkon's connection, a living bond in that back of his thoughts, full of feelings and understanding.

And apology. 

Shiro felt the lion's eyes on him as he crossed the hanger and he felt the sorrow in the lion's mind. The black lion had cast him aside in favour of Real Shiro and it had nearly destroyed everything. The black lion had chosen Real Shiro over him based on his biology, but the contents of his mind, warped by the Galra conditioning, had made Real Shiro someone else entirely. The black lion felt guilt for trusting Real Shiro so easily, for letting him in despite the treatment he'd been put through, for casting this Shiro aside. 

Shiro felt the thought flowing down the bond, the lion's certainty behind it. This Shiro, the one standing in front of it now, was its true paladin. 

"He's still the Real Shiro," Shiro said. 

He felt the lion's disagreement. _He_ was the real Shiro, the lion seemed to say. He was the one with Shiro's thoughts and memories, his true memories, not the distorted half-truths the Galra had left behind. The other Shiro might be physically the original, but it was this Shiro who embodied who and what Shiro truly was. He felt the lion's certainty like a burning force through his mind and it was hard to argue with that. He just wasn't sure what this would mean for the other Shiro.


	15. Chapter 15

Days had become weeks. The other Shiro was behaving more like himself, but there was still that lingering fear that tainted each interaction. Shiro tried to spend time with the other Shiro, sometimes sitting in the lion hanger and letting the great cat link their minds so that they could share thoughts, share memories. Each time they did it, Shiro felt the anger in his counterpart less and less. 

Physically, the other Shiro was recovering too. They worked out together most days, building up the other Shiro's strength and pre-emptively staving off nightmares through sheer exhaustion. 

But emotionally, things were harder to fix. One morning, as they sparred together, the other Shiro had Shiro pinned, an arm across his throat, the pressure just enough to start to cut off his air. In that instant, Shiro felt a twinge of fear that his other self might kill him, might wipe him out to reclaim his place on the team. The fear was gone as quickly as it came, but it was too late. The other Shiro had seen it in his eyes. He released his grip and stood, backing away a few steps. 

Shiro climbed to his feet too, trying to keep his tone light, to ignore what had just passed between them. 

"I guess this means we're a match for each other now. Do you want to go again?" 

The other Shiro looked away. "I'm going to leave the castle." 

"What?" Shiro hadn't expected that. The thought had never even occurred to him that the other Shiro might want to leave, which raised some interesting questions about what this meant for their similarities as people. 

"You're the black paladin now. We both know it." 

Shiro still felt guilt over that, felt like he was stealing what ought to belong to someone else. The black lion had accepted him back and their bond was as deep as it had ever been, but every time he looked at the other Shiro, he felt the violation of what the Galra had done. He could understand how the other Shiro must feel and that meant he could get no joy out of his position. 

He wanted to say something reassuring, to insist that the other Shiro would earn his place back, but he wasn't sure those words were true. He wasn't sure what the future might hold, whether the team would accept him again after what had happened. The other Shiro knew him well enough that any false hope was pointless. 

"I can't stay here," the other Shiro continued. "Even if I stay here a year or ten years, everyone will remember what happened. They'll look at me and wonder if I'm going to snap again, if I'll betray them again." 

The rules about the other Shiro's movements had been relaxed, but he was still banned for critical parts of the castle, just in case. That was a challenge, because even if he went several days without showing any sign of Galra influence, it would only take one slip up to cost them so much, so no one was willing to give him any chance to betray them again. Each fragment of trust they offered him back came with a layer of caution that couldn't be disguised. 

"Where would you go?" Shiro asked. 

"Back to Earth. I can do good there." 

"What kind of good?" 

"The Galaxy Garrison only know a few fragments about the Galra, whatever they picked up when we were attacked on Kerberos and whatever they were able to learn from the escape pod I crashed. They know there's a danger but not much more than that. I can go back and explain everything that's going on. Earth can prepare a real defence, maybe even join the Voltron coalition." 

That made sense. Earth was way out on the edge of the galaxy, while most of the conflict was taking place in the core, where star systems were much closer together, but the fact that Galra ships had been in the solar system at least twice couldn't be ignored. Pidge's Galra finder was set up to alert them if there was any activity near Earth, but they all knew it was inevitable that Earth would be brought into the conflict. Sending someone who could talk with authority about the Galra and the war effort made a lot of sense. They wouldn't need to tell the Garrison anything about Galra brain-washing or clones, so as far as they were concerned, they would just see a former officer returning home with useful intelligence. 

"You can take messages to the other paladin's families while you're there," Shiro said. "I'm sure Pidge's mom will be thrilled to hear about Matt." 

"Actually," the other Shiro said, "I talked this idea over with Matt. He wants to come with me." 

"What?" 

"I was talking to him about how I didn't feel I was being particularly useful here, what with all the precautions. He admitted that he didn't feel particularly useful either." 

That was news to Shiro. Matt was involved so much in the technology of the castle, working with Pidge on her gadgets, or decoding any Galra transmissions they picked up, that Shiro would have said he played an important role. But he tried to imagine what it would have been like here if the black lion hadn't taken him back as paladin. The whole castle and their role in the war with Voltron was set up around the paladins. To be a non-paladin in the castle must be difficult. 

"Are you sure about this?" Shiro asked. 

The other Shiro nodded. "I'm sure. I can be useful on Earth and I won't be any threat to Voltron from there. Besides, it might help me to be in familiar places, to face memories from before the war. It's the right choice for me." 

"OK." 

The other Shiro smiled. He looked relieved that Shiro had agreed. "Thanks." 

"No problem," Shiro said. "I guess I should go talk to Matt." 

***

Shiro would be sad to see Matt leave, but he wanted to help prepare Earth for the threat they faced and he thought he could use what he'd learned about Galran and Altean technology to improve the Galaxy Garrison ships, so that Earth could have a real defence force if the Galra did show up. He would be travelling with samples of weaponry as well as several data storage devices full of blueprints and designs. He wasn't just focusing on weapons, but had plans for everything from the healing pods to the food goo dispenser, talking about how he might be able to cure illness and poverty while he was at it. 

"Your welcome home might not be particularly welcoming," Shiro warned him. He'd told the story of how he'd been taken prisoner and rendered unconscious within minutes of crashing his escape pod on Earth. 

"I know, but it's not like we'll be under time pressure the way you were," Matt answered. "If they insist on sticking up in quarantine and running tests on us, it's not a big deal. We can still explain the situation from quarantine." 

"Just take a comms unit with you, in case you need to call us in to come rescue you." 

Matt laughed. "I don't think that will be necessary. But if you insist." 

As well as all his tech information, Matt would be carrying with him messages from the paladins. Keith had declined the offer, saying there was no one left on Earth he particularly wanted to talk to, but all the others had recorded videos to be taken home to their families. Lance had recorded over two hours of video, composing personal messages to his parents, his siblings, and a ridiculous number of cousins. Matt promised to deliver the messages personally. 

When the time came for the departure, Shiro wasn't sure they'd actually be able to leave, since Pidge didn't seem about to let go of Matt any time soon. She'd latched her limbs round him in a hug and might need to be pried off him with a crowbar. Shiro looked away from their tearful goodbye and looked instead at the other Shiro, who held out his hand to him. 

"Take care of the team," the other Shiro said. 

"I will. You take care of Matt. And yourself." 

They shook hands and then Shiro pulled the other Shiro into a hug. 

"Good luck," they said together, and Shiro couldn't help but smile, their similarities showing through once again. The other Shiro mirrored the expression, but then he turned away, walking towards the pod that was fuelled up and ready for them. Shiro gave Matt a brief hug too and then stood there, watching as the pod lifted from the ground and burst into space, towards the portal that Allura was opening to speed them on their journey back to Earth. 

It was sad to see them go, but something inside Shiro seemed to relax as the pod vanished from sight. The other Shiro was gone. Some anxious piece of him that had been waiting for the other man to take back his place here was finally able to vanish. No one was going to steal his place from him now. There would be no possibility of arguments over which of them deserved to be here, leading the team, piloting the black lion. He was the black paladin. 

He was Shiro.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with the story. I hope you've all enjoyed it. Thanks especially to those who've left comments - comments are love. :) 
> 
> See you next time.
> 
> For whatever random fandom stuff has caught my interest this week, come [follow me on Tumblr](http://jessicameats.tumblr.com). For more about my writing, [check out my blog](http://plot-twister.co.uk).


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